Naveen Jha is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Deshpande Foundation, India. He has been with the foundation since its inception in India bringing a vision of enabling local solutions through a bottom-up approach. Naveen is passionate about mentoring youth who are interested in social entrepreneurship. This has led to the launch of several highly successful fellowship programs at Deshpande Foundation that has produced hundreds of graduates now working with social enterprises all over India. Naveen has also pioneered a series of youth development programs that helps transform the attitudes of young people into solving problems locally. One of these programs, LEAD (Leaders Accelerating Development), has more than ten thousand students engaged in problem-solving in their communities and has unleashed the power of social change within their neighbourhoods.

Naveen has helped in building the Sandbox Startups initiative, which provides incubation support and a co-working space to mission-driven entrepreneurs with innovative ideas. Prior to his work with the Deshpande Foundation, Naveen worked for six years at PRADAN, a pioneering livelihoods organization where, as Team leader, he helped create usable and sustainable prototypes of livelihoods programs and water resource management.