The people closest to poverty often see its solutions first. Yet too rarely are they the ones shaping how the world understands its challenges or what it will take to overcome them.

The Public Voices Fellowship Tackling Poverty was created to change that. Launched last year by Acumen Academy and The OpEd Project, with the generous support of Senior Advisors Ann MacDougall and Jules Kaufman, the Fellowship helps Acumen Fellows bring their knowledge, experiences, and ideas to a wider audience through op-eds and public commentary.

Our first cohort of 21 leaders from East and West Africa has spent the past year doing exactly that. Their perspectives have reached readers of BusinessDay, Climate Home News, The Pan African Review, The Tanzania Times, and beyond. These articles have challenged conventional thinking on everything from energy access and locally-led development to maternal health and economic opportunity. Together, this work is helping shape a more informed conversation about what it takes to tackle poverty. Read a selection of their pieces here.

Now, we're welcoming a new group of leaders to the conversation.

The 2026 cohort brings together 20 Acumen Fellows from across Asia, representing India, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Singapore, each drawing on years of experience working alongside communities and building solutions to some of the region's most pressing challenges. 

From advancing the rights of nomadic communities in Tamil Nadu and expanding access to science education in Pakistan to strengthening artisan livelihoods in India and rethinking how social innovation is financed, these Public Voices Fellows bring diverse perspectives and a shared conviction that those doing the work have important insights to contribute to the public debate.

Over the coming year, they'll sharpen their voices and expand their reach through four convenings, one-on-one coaching from leading journalists and editors, and opportunities to develop and publish at least three pieces of thought leadership each.

We look forward to seeing the ideas, experiences, and perspectives they'll bring to conversations far beyond their own communities.

Amneh is a social entrepreneur, cultural practitioner and sustainability advocate working at the intersection of gender equality, decolonization and cultural design. With more than two decades of experience across Pakistan's impact and creative sectors, her work spans women's economic empowerment, cultural heritage, sustainable fashion and climate resilience. She is Chair and Curator of the Women of the World (WOW) Festivals in Pakistan, Founder and CEO of Polly and Other Stories, and Chief Strategy Officer at The Blue Company. An Acumen, Miller Center and IVLP Fellow, she is also the author of "Fearless: Stories of Amazing Women from Pakistan."

Dr. Andrew Kok is a medical doctor and social entrepreneur advancing equitable health care for refugees, asylum seekers and underserved communities in Malaysia. As Founder and Director of Autrui Global, a social business, he strengthens maternal and child health through technology, community partnerships and data-driven care. Drawing on expertise in primary care, digital health and social innovation, Andrew develops scalable health solutions for displaced and vulnerable populations and turns frontline challenges into evidence that informs policy and expands access to quality care.

Ayu is the Executive Director of Energy Action Partners (ENACT), an international nonprofit advancing community-driven, last-mile energy access across Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and co-founder of COMET, a community engagement and demand planning platform for decentralized energy. An aerospace engineer by training, she has spent nearly two decades on energy access in East Africa, Asia and the Pacific. She leads ENACT's role in Malaysia's Sabah RE2 Initiative, which mapped 400 unelectrified villages and helped bring community-led electrification into the state's 2040 energy master plan. She is Board Vice President of the Alliance for Renewable Electrification and a 2023 Acumen Malaysia Fellow.

Haya is a Karachi-based barrister who believes the law shouldn't stay in courtrooms most people can't afford to enter. In 2013, under the mentorship of Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid, she founded the Legal Aid Society, growing it from individual casework into an institution of more than 100 people spanning legal aid, policy reform and technology. Today the organization runs the Sindh Legal Advisory Call Centre, NAZ Assist (Pakistan's first multilingual legal chatbot) and MICADR, its arbitration and mediation center. Haya is not a technologist. She is a lawyer who got tired of watching good policy die in implementation and built the infrastructure to change that.

Ian is an investigative journalist, documentary producer and social impact entrepreneur, and the Co-founder of The Fourth, an investigative documentary team dedicated to exposing injustice and driving social change. His work has helped expose human traffickers, drug syndicates, child predators and wildlife smugglers, leading to national legal reforms and the arrest of syndicate leaders. He has served on advisory boards for the Pulitzer Center and the Environmental Reporting Collective, a global network of environmental investigative journalists, and currently sits on the board of Greenpeace Malaysia.

Jeff is an entrepreneur who has built businesses in the Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore. He is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Mayani, a social impact agtech startup that improves the lives of Filipino smallholder farmers and fisherfolk through fair access to markets, credit and farm inputs. Mayani's goal is to transform food systems and position smallholders as agents of climate resilience, food security and rural progress. Jeff also sits on the boards of SEED Philippines, a nonprofit agriculture organization, and the Philippine office of global advertising group Hakuhodo. He is a graduate of the University of the Philippines School of Economics.

Joelle leads Acumen Academy's expansion across Southeast Asia, designing and scaling leadership programs for entrepreneurs and innovators tackling poverty in the region. A Singaporean based in Kuala Lumpur, she spent more than 15 years founding and scaling ventures in technology and startups across Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. As General Manager of FastCo Malaysia, she helped launch FastGig, a platform connecting low-wage part-time and freelance workers to income, and became an advocate for Malaysia's gig workers. That work led her to the 2023 Acumen Malaysia Fellowship. She is a Gen.T Leader of Tomorrow and was named Entrepreneur of the Year at the 2019 Women in IT Asia Awards.

Lala Rukh is a social entrepreneur, STEM learning designer and the Founder and CEO of Science Fuse, which builds science capital among children and young people in Pakistan, particularly those from marginalized communities, and has reached 98,000 children to date. For more than 16 years, she has worked across Norway, the U.K. and Pakistan designing programs that make science more accessible and participatory, including at the Science Museum in London and Norway's Forskerfabrikken. She believes scientific literacy is about the confidence and sense of belonging to see oneself in science. She is a Malala Fund Education Champion, Pakistan Acumen Fellow and Ashoka Changemaker Exchange Fellow.

Muhammad is the Co-founder of FarmDost, an agritech venture he launched in 2022 to reduce post-harvest loss for Pakistani smallholder farmers. Its hermetic storage line sold roughly 45,000 units and reached around 8,000 farmers before he led a pivot to QR-based traceability infrastructure for sesame and rice exporters facing EU compliance requirements. Muhammad is a graduate of Acumen Academy's Pakistan Agriculture Accelerator. He also runs Shifa Farms, a regenerative agriculture farm in Mianwali, and works on applying AI and automation to agricultural supply chains.

Nivedita is a lawyer, policy researcher and the Founder of Pacta, a boutique law and policy firm working at the intersection of law, technology and social change. Her disability work focuses on translating rights into lived access across justice, mobility, digital infrastructure and public services. She has led research on access to justice for persons with disabilities, examining barriers across police, prisons, courts and legal aid systems, with a focus on inclusion, ethical data use and accountability. A Princeton MPP graduate, she works to move beyond compliance so disability rights are not only recognized in law but experienced in everyday life.

Dr. Peter Gan is a public health physician, humanitarian and academic dedicated to strengthening health systems and advancing health equity. As Deputy CEO of the Health Transformation Office at Malaysia's Ministry of Health, he plays a leading role in shaping national reforms toward universal health coverage and addressing the social determinants of health. He also serves on the executive council of MERCY Malaysia, engages with the RISE Southeast Asia Committee on Climate and Health and is an adjunct senior lecturer at Monash University Malaysia. He holds a medical degree from Manipal University and a doctorate in public health from the University of Malaya.

Revathi is the Founder and Director of Vanavil Trust, which works with Nomadic and De-notified Tribes in Tamil Nadu. For more than two decades, she has walked alongside these communities on education, child protection, livelihoods, health and nutrition while advocating for their identity, dignity and rights. A theater practitioner, educator and writer, she uses the arts and community leadership to challenge the invisibility and stigma Nomadic Tribes face, and to create spaces where young people can shape their own narratives. She has received the Tamil Nadu government's Women's Empowerment Award, Birsa Munda Award, Kalvi Tharagai Award and TiEcon Changemaker Award.

Samina is a public policy entrepreneur and the Founder and CEO of RightWalk Foundation, which works alongside governments to redesign policies and build delivery systems that outlast any one organization. Her work has helped 1.5 million children from low-income families access private school seats guaranteed under India's Right to Education law and opened paid apprenticeship pathways for 500,000 young people. A first-generation learner, Muslim woman and person with a disability, Samina brings lived experience of exclusion into the rooms where public systems are shaped. An engineer and IIM Bangalore Distinguished Alumna, she is an Acumen, Ashoka, Mulago and Chevening Fellow.

Dr. Sara Saeed Khurram is a physician, entrepreneur and health equity advocate, and the Co-founder and CEO of Sehat Kahani, a digital health platform born from a contradiction she experienced firsthand. While millions in Pakistan struggle to access health care, thousands of qualified women doctors remain out of the workforce. Over the past decade, Sehat Kahani has delivered more than 5.5 million consultations while creating pathways for women physicians to return to medicine. Sara is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, Acumen Fellow, Cartier Women's Initiative Fellow and Rolex Associate Laureate who believes lived experience must have a stronger voice in shaping public policy.

Satyendra is the Founder and National Convenor of the National Youth Equity Forum (NYEF). A first-generation development professional from the Dalit community, he grew up in a remote village in Bihar and has spent more than 20 years advancing equity for socially excluded children and youth, including Dalit, Adivasi, Muslim, Nomadic and Denotified communities. Through NYEF, he has built a youth-led collective of more than 10,000 young leaders, helping first-generation learners move into higher education, leadership and employment. An alumnus of JNU and TISS, he co-founded CSEI and Gram Jagat and is an Acumen Fellow, CSIP-Ashoka University Research Fellow and Senior Fellow of the American India Foundation.

Sikai believes the economy must be reshaped to make impact and poverty alleviation a core tenet, and has spent a decade working on one of its most critical levers, finance. As Southeast Asia Lead at 100x Impact at the London School of Economics, he works with local partners to identify the enabling conditions, including funding, for social innovation to reach scale in the region. He was previously Chief Operating Officer and Innovative Finance Lead at Tri-Sector Associates and began his career at Dalberg Advisors, advising major funders on how to deploy their capital. Sikai is an Acumen Fellow and advisor to Acumen Academy in Southeast Asia.

Swapnil is the Founder of Deesha Education Foundation, which works to eliminate avoidable blindness by building stronger systems for eye donation, eye banking and access to corneal transplants in India. Inspired by the loss of a friend who could not get a transplant in time, he has spent more than two decades working across health care, technology and community engagement. Under his leadership, Deesha has established multiple eye banks and retrieval centers, facilitated more than 12,700 corneal donations and advocated for policy reform. Swapnil is an Acumen India Fellow and Foundry member and serves in leadership roles across India's eye-banking ecosystem.

Vishpala is the Founder and Director of EkiBeki, a hybrid social enterprise preserving India's endangered craft heritage. An architect and furniture designer trained at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, she founded EkiBeki in 2018 to keep artisans and their crafts relevant for future generations. EkiBeki has translated more than 60 traditional crafts, from Gond and Pattachitra to Longpi pottery, into contemporary design and builds producer-owned clusters connected to domestic and international markets. A co-creator of Creative Dignity and contributor to India's G20 report on craft preservation, she is an Acumen Fellow and has been recognized by Vital Voices and Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women.

Wardah is a social entrepreneur, educator and advocate working to expand economic opportunity for underserved communities in Pakistan. As CEO of xWave, an employability initiative, she equips young people from low-income and rural backgrounds with digital skills, career preparation and pathways to sustainable income. Through training, partnerships and career support, she has helped young people, especially young women, build practical skills and access meaningful work. A LUMS graduate and Acumen Fellow, Wardah has received the Prime Minister's Youth Excellence Award and the PSL Humary Hero Award for her work on poverty alleviation.

Yutika is the Co-founder of Nāgrika Policy Research Foundation, an independent think tank that amplifies citizen voices and generates knowledge from India's small cities. For the past decade, she has worked across research, urban governance, public policy and community engagement, building platforms that bring the experiences of smaller cities into national policy conversations. Her work explores inclusive urban development, citizen participation and how local knowledge can lead to better decisions. Yutika is also an ICF-certified leadership coach supporting social impact leaders. She is interested in challenging narratives that overlook smaller cities and in asking whose knowledge counts in India's development.