Niru Kumar

Niru Kumar is a doctor and consultant on gender and diversity, and the founder of Ask Insights, a diversity and inclusion consultancy. She was named for the Padma Shri in 2021 in the field of social work, from Delhi ^[1].

Doctor

Kumar was born on 12 October 1961 ^[2]. Polio paralysed her left leg when she was three; she wore full-length callipers from childhood and had three major operations between 16 and 18 ^[2]. She went on to study medicine at Maulana Azad Medical College ^[2]. In 1987 she joined the Central Government Health Service, and after 26 years took voluntary retirement in 2014 to work for society ^[2].

Inclusion at work

She was among the first in India to study diversity and inclusion with leading international experts, and founded Ask Insights to advise companies ^[2]. She has trained chief executives, managers and factory workers across the country ^[2].

Much of her work has been about women in manufacturing, where women engineers often faced doubts about whether they belonged on the factory floor ^[2]. For companies such as Hindalco, Vedanta, Diageo and PepsiCo she visited plant after plant in remote areas, training more than 1,500 people in Hindalco and Vedanta factories alone ^[2].

She has spoken twice at the Forum on Workplace Inclusion in Minneapolis, was the only Indian expert in the global “DEI Futures” project, and since 2017 has organised global summits in India with the United Nations ^[2]. The Election Commission of India named her a national icon for its campaign to leave no voter behind ^[2].