Vardhani is a passionate advocate of gender mainstreaming and social inclusion, and a Monitoring and Evaluation professional. She has strived to mainstream gender through multiple gender initiatives, and into organisational policies, monitoring and evaluation systems. In her two decades of experience, she has worked with several multi-/bi-lateral and inter-governmental organisations such as UNDP, UNICEF, DFID, UNFAO and IDLO.

She has developed gender policies for organisations, trained staff on them, and led multiple research and evaluation projects from a gender- and disability-sensitive lens. She was the lead evaluator on a legal assistance project for girls who are victims of sexual trafficking and led research on the inter-link between women’s empowerment and microfinance, as well as research on accessible transport for women with disabilities to access healthcare.

Currently, she works at the 117 Member Country, International Solar Alliance (ISA) championing gender inclusion in solar initiatives of ISA, to address energy poverty and help achieve SDGs 7 and 13 on energy access and climate change. She also leads ISA’s ‘Solar for She’ initiative, that aims to enhance women’s energy access and incomes by building their capacity and providing them employment opportunities in the solar sector.