Priya Agrawal

Priya Agrawal founded Antarang Foundation in 2012. The foundation’s primary purpose is to help young adults from socially and economically vulnerable backgrounds bridge the transition from education to long-term employment.

Antarang’s programs for at-risk youth focus on planning and outcomes, connecting youth with jobs that increase their social standing and empower them to engage in long-term career planning. Antarang encourages youth to align their aspirations with their reality while developing the confidence and competence to go further.

Antarang’s CareeReady program is designed not only to help youth get job placements, but to ensure that they have the skills and resiliency to adapt to their new environment. To that end, Antarang has also built a strong community of professionals who come on board as mentors to guide the youth until they have successfully completed the first year on their placements. Because of programs like these, Antarang-supported youths’ first-year job placement dropout rate is 20 percent, in contrast to the national average of 60-80 percent.

Anatarang also sees addressing key points of failure in traditional career linkage programs for at-risk youth as part of its mission. The foundation has designed a sequence of interventions that can be incorporated into existing programs to improve outcomes.

Prior to founding Antarang, Agrawal spent 11 years in the social sector where she led organizations including SNEHA and The Akanksha Foundation as chief operating officer. She moved to this sector after a decade in advertising and market research. Agrwaal has a master’s degree in management from the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research.