Gomathi Palanikumar joined the Freedom Fund in November 2020 as Program Advisor for the Freedom Rising Initiative, transformative leadership program working to empower and connect anti-slavery leaders around the world. Prior to this, she worked as an India Program Manager in WeWorld Onuls, managing programs in South India on preventing child trafficking, child migration and child marriages. She worked with various international organization such as EveryChild UK, ActionAid on supporting grassroot NGOs and CBOs on ending bonded labor, trafficking and manual scavenging in India.
Gomathi has more than 13 years of experience in community development, program design and management, monitoring and evaluation for NGOs and CBOs working on child protection and child rights. She is a trainer, facilitator and assisted various field level research program. She designed and developed various campaigns such as Beti Zindabad (Save girl child campaign) and abolition of manual scavenging in India.
Gomathi holds M.A in Social Work with the specialization on social justice, equity and governance from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and currently working on her PhD with the same institute.