Vasundhara Kamath is the Director of Learning & Development at Running Start, a non-partisan non-profit organization that trains young women to run for office. In her role, Vasundhara works to ensure that Running Start’s program elements are evidence-based. She engages with different stakeholders of the organization to define priorities, while using a transformative lens to help young women on their path to politics.

Vasundhara is committed to make governments more representative and to reduce barriers to entry in politics for underrepresented communities. She has a Master of Public Policy from the George Washington University (GWU), with a dual concentration in gender policy and program evaluation. During her time at GWU, she was involved with projects examining patterns of diversity in the US federal government, the role of sports based interventions in increasing girls’ confidence, and opportunities for women’s political participation in Pakistan. Before moving to the United States, Vasundhara completed her PhD in law from NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, with research focused on the free speech implications of restrictive copyright systems. She was an Assistant Professor at Christ University, Bangalore, teaching courses on Indian constitutional law and feminist jurisprudence. These experiences got her interested in understanding the implications of legal measures using evidence, and the importance of representation in government. She completed her undergraduate law degree from Mangalore, India, where she was the first woman president of the student bar council at her college.