Melissa Richer, Executive Director 
Melissa (@melissaricher) is the Founder and Executive Director of Ayllu. She previously worked for Ashoka: Innovators for the Public and as a consultant for social enterprises. She has worked on international development projects in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America that include education, maternity care, conflict resolution, immigration, and minority rights. Melissa graduated magna cum laude from Duke University.
Nate Heller, Director of Product Development 
Nate grew up in Washington DC and has consulted with a variety of social enterprises around the world, including VisionSpring and Pratham Books in India, Conversion Sound in Nigeria, and Somos Más in Colombia. Nate believes that the spread of social enterprise solutions is essential to making international development efforts more sustainable and demand driven, and that improved information sharing is key to helping these solutions spread throughout the world. Previous to entering the field of social enterprise, Nate spent over 6 years working in other areas of international development, primarily in West Africa, with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, and the US Peace Corps. Nate holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management, an MA in International Relations and Economics from Johns Hopkins University (SAIS), and a BA in Philosophy from Connecticut College.
Geetika Agrawal, Director of Business Development
Geetika believes in the power of entrepreneurship to create transformative change, enriched by a career spent in the worlds of technology and social enterprise. She’s worked across sectors, including leading an incubator team at IBM creating data management products and co-developing a business plan for low cost water testing, winner of the NYU Stern Social Venture Competition. Geetika has also worked on both the investor and invest sides of the equation, as an associate for Acumen Fund in India and consulting for 1298, a Mumbai based ambulance company. Her desire to understand all dimensions of the social enterprise scene has led her to innovative hubs across the globe, including Silicon Valley, Hyderabad, and London. Geetika is excited to bring her passion for new ventures as the Director of Business Development at Ayllu. She holds an MBA from NYU Stern and a Bachelors in Computer Science from Stanford. When not working, she’s usually found attending to her insatiable wanderlust or equally insatiable appetite, often at the same time.
Juli Qermezi Huang, India Project Manager
Juli Qermezi Huang is a nomad at heart. Originally from Saint Louis, USA, Juli spent her childhood living among Qashqa’i mobile pastoralists in the Zagros Mountains in southwestern Iran. Since then, Juli has lived in seven countries in seven years, studying in the US and the UK and conducting anthropological research and working in the Middle East, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and South Asia to understand the dynamics between states and tribes, globalization and local experience, sustainable development and entrepreneurship. Juli most recently worked as Artemisia’s India Coordinator, conducting research on the Social Business sector and connecting innovative Social Businesses with young entrepreneurial leaders from the AIESEC network. Juli is currently a Masters candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science and is leading the design and implementation of Ayllu’s India map.