Fulbright Mahathi Kumar “ALL IN” as Special Projects Coordinator

PSYDEH is thrilled to highlight the good work of team member Mahathi Kumar, a U.S. Fulbright-García Robles Scholar to Mexico, 2018-2019.

An English Teaching Assistant at La Universidad Politécnica Francisco I. Madero in Tepatepec, Hidalgo, Mahathi serves as PSYDEH’s Special Projects Coordinator.

Her duties include helping PSYDEH with thought leadership on marketing material design and production, new internal policy development and leading our 2019 “Sustain Impact” global crowdfunding campaign. Here, she uses learning from our recent Route to Good partnership with the global Dentsu Aegis Network to raise funds to underwrite our new bilingual female Coordinator of Sustainability, as well as ongoing fieldwork. See this Campaign FAQ for more detail.

Damon Taylor, PSYDEH Senior Advisor, says of Mahathi, “[She] is an impressive professional. Sincere and good-humored, she impacts by being thoughtful when taking risks, by offering her unique wisdom on how best to navigate the tension between cultural perspectives on how PSYDEH executes its bottom-up development work.”

Mahathi is a graduate of the University of Connecticut where she earned her B.S. in Physiology and Neurobiology and developed a sustainable volunteer program at a local community hospital and performed basic science and clinical research. She is passionate about honoring individuals’ innate power, of education-based empowerment of women to make a social impact through choosing to grow our and partners’ well-being. She writes:

“What strikes me about PSYDEH is their valuing the importance of story-telling. Every person has their own story to tell in their own voice. It is an honor to work with a multi-disciplinary and cultural group of people who are so committed to making these stories heard and to harness them to make change.”