Chandni is a Lead Researcher and faculty member at the School of Environment and Sustainability, Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), Bangalore. She works on climate change adaptation, drivers of differential vulnerability to climate change, and rural and urban livelihood transitions. Geographically, her work is located in rapidly transitioning, climate hotspots across South Asia, especially in dryland rural areas and coastal cities, with emerging work across Sub-Saharan Africa. Chandni has more than a decade of experience working with multi-country, interdisciplinary teams and is also a published poet. She was Lead Author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Working Group II Assessment Report 6 and Contributing author to the IPCC’s Special Report on 1.5°C. She serves on the editorial boards of Regional Environmental Change, Urbanisation, and WIRES Climate Change. Chandni holds a PhD in International Development from the University of Reading, UK and an MSc in Natural Resource Management from TERI University, India.

Kalpana Sharma is an independent journalist, columnist and author based in Mumbai. In five decades as a journalist, she has worked with Himmat Weekly, Indian Express, Times of India and The Hindu. She was Consulting Editor with Economic & Political Weekly and Reader’s Editor with Scroll.in. Currently, she writes a column on the media in Newslaundry.com. She has written two books: “The Silence and the Storm: Narratives of violence against women in India and & “Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from Asia’s Largest Slum” and edited “Single by Choice: Happily Unmarried Women”; and “Missing Half the Story: Journalism as if gender matters”.

Laurie Goering is an award-winning climate change journalist and editor, with a passion for storytelling and working with young frontline journalists across the world to develop other great climate change storytellers. She created and for 14 years ran the Thomson Reuters Foundation's news website on the human impacts of a warming planet, recruiting and managing a team of Global South freelance writers in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America, many of them in the most climate-vulnerable parts of the globe. Prior to coming to the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Laurie was a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune newspaper based for 15 years in Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, South Africa, India and the UK. She opened the first post-revolution U.S. newspaper bureau in Cuba in 2000 and covered the Second Gulf War in Iraq in 2003. She has written about and run coverage on a broad range of climate change issues for more than 20 years. Currently she is Extreme Heat Editor for Climate Resilience for All, managing journalism around growing global heat risk linked to climate change.

Rajesh Joseph is an Associate Professor in the School of Development, Azim Premji University, Bangalore. He is part of the livelihood initiative team at the university. He teaches various courses on livelihoods and informal labour. His interest has been in the area of informal economy and urban livelihoods. His research interest has been on the Domestic Workers Unions, Health of women garment workers in Bangalore and Youth Migration from Chhattisgarh. His current research interest is on the 10 years implementation status of the Street Vending Act. Recently, he has been nominated by the Department of labour, Karnataka to be on the committee to draft the Karnataka Labour Policy. Prior to joining as faculty at the University, he has worked for 14 years in the development sector.. He has worked in the field of urban poverty dealing with issues in the informal sector of the economy such as Education, Financial inclusion, Social Security, Migration, and Job placement.

Rajiv Khandelwal is the co-founder and Director of Aajeevika Bureau - a public service initiative headquartered in Rajasthan that defends the rights of low income, wage dependent migrant workers who leave their rural homes to find work in urban and industrial markets. Under Rajiv’s leadership Aajeevika Bureau has earned national recognition for its contribution to the domain of informal work, labour migration and urban inclusion. Rajiv's teams have designed innovative programmes in legal aid, skilling, financial access, skilling and social security by collectivizing and empowering thousands of migrant workers. Aajeevika Bureau has also made rich contributions to knowledge and policy  on labour migration in India. Rajiv earned a degree in management at the Institute of Rural Management, Anand and has participated in academic programmes at INSEAD and Harvard Kennedy School. He has published extensively, teaches and speaks nationally and internationally on the issue of migration, labour and urban inclusion. Rajiv Khandelwal was elected as an Ashoka Fellow in 2005 and as the India Social Entrepreneur of the Year in 2010 at the World Economic Forum.