Rashi Mehta joins Ashoka’s Board of Trustees

Ashoka University has welcomed Rashi Mehta as a new member of its Board of Trustees. She co-founded Rahi Systems, a Silicon Valley data infrastructure company that grew into a 25-country operation before its acquisition by Wesco, a Fortune 200 firm. She now applies that same builder’s instinct to philanthropy, education and women’s leadership.

In 2024, Rashi founded Iron Lady Foundation in memory of her mother, Dr Leela Mehta, one of Rajasthan’s first practising gynaecologists, who offered free medical care to women in villages at a time when girls were routinely denied schooling. The foundation’s programmes run across education, healthcare, water and sanitation, digital access and women’s economic independence, with a first project completed in Rajasthan: a functioning water system for a village school, alongside sponsorships that keep girls enrolled past the ages where dropout is common.

Rashi holds an MBA from ICFAI University and studied executive coaching at UC Berkeley, where she has since coached CEOs and CFOs across industries. She has extended that training through Stanford PACS’s Centre for Strategic Philanthropy and a programme at Harvard. Her board commitments include Make-A-Wish Foundation’s Greater Bay Area chapter, Mantra4Change USA, GivingPi’s founding circle, and a founding trusteeship at Plaksha University.

At Ashoka, Rashi intends to focus on the university’s initiatives for women’s education, including programmes on access and on leadership pathways for young women. It is the same wager she has made through Iron Lady Foundation: give women access early, and the returns compound across a family, then a community.

“I am proud to join the Board of Trustees of Ashoka University, an institution that reflects the kind of future I deeply believe in: one shaped by education, inquiry, and leadership,” she said. “Success gave me the opportunity to build businesses. Purpose gave me the responsibility to build people. I look forward to supporting Ashoka’s mission of developing young minds who will go on to shape stronger, more thoughtful, and more equitable societies.”

Rashi’s appointment adds a voice with direct, on-the-ground experience of what it takes to move girls from access to opportunity — experience drawn from the foundation she has run herself, project by project, since 2024. Ashoka’s leadership has welcomed her appointment as the university continues to expand its own portfolio of initiatives aimed at closing gender gaps in higher education.