Rukmini Banerji is Chief Executive Officer of Pratham Education Foundation and has been with Pratham since 1996. She became CEO in 2015. Rukmini has extensive experience in program design and implementation and has led many of Pratham’s partnerships with state governments. Rukmini also led Pratham’s research activities, including the well-known Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) effort from 2005 to 2014. Rukmini was trained as an economist (St. Stephen's College, Delhi School of Economics, Oxford University).
In 1991, she completed her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in education. In 2008, Rukmini was awarded the Maulana Abul Kalam Shiksha Puraskar by the Government of Bihar. She was the first recipient of this award. She is also the 2021 Yidan Prize awardee for education development. Originally from Bihar, she is now based between New Delhi and Pune. Rukmini writes frequently on education in both Hindi and English and enjoys creating stories for children.