Sutapa Sanyal

Former Director General of Police, U.P. D&I Expert

Sutapa Sanyal is a consultant, advisor, trainer and speaker on Leadership, Gender & Diversity, Social Inclusion and Public Policy. She was the first woman Indian Police Service (IPS) officer to serve as Director General of Police in U. P. and is the recipient of the Police Medal for Distinguished Services from the Hon. President of India.

 

With over three decades of demonstrated leadership experience in managing cross-functional teams and acumen in public administration, Ms Sanyal has designed and implemented several innovative programmes for social inclusion and gender equality.

 

She founded the U.P. Police Mahila Samman Prakoshth (MSP), an award-winning, ISO 9001:2008 certified police unit that worked to empower over 175 million women and children. She built close partnerships with not-for-profits and international organisations like UNICEF, Action Aid and Plan India and led the fundraising, technical and logistical operations of the organization. Under her leadership, MSP received the FICCI SMART Policing Award, Digital Empowerment Foundation’s “Manthan” Award and several other honours

 

Ms Sanyal established several initiatives at MSP including: “Vikalp” (India’s first police web portal for reporting crimes against women and children, which resulted in a 97% police response rate), “Nav Chetna” (training of law enforcement officers on gender equality), “Akshaya” (self-defence and leadership training program for girls), “Citizen Cadet,” (program to channelize the leadership of women’s collectives for economic and social empowerment) and “Ru-Ba-Ru” (dialogue forum to increase communications between public servants and youth). She was also instrumental in setting up model child-friendly police stations and Special Juvenile Police Units in U.P and led the anti-human trafficking efforts of the State

 

She has also served as Advisor (Security) to GAIL India Ltd. (where she led the security set-up for the PSU’s Indian and international operations), as the Chairperson of the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) of UP Police (the second largest police force in the world), and as Member of the Advisory Committee of CARA (Ministry of Women & Child Development). Currently, she serves as an independent consultant to the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, started by the Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi.

 

Ms Sanyal has been widely lauded as a champion of women and child empowerment, and her work has been recognized by the US Department of State and INTERPOL. She was also honoured as an “Indian Woman Leader” by the British High Commission and was invited to participate in a dialogue with Members of Parliament and other eminent civil society leaders of U.K. She also represented the Govt. in the discussions with delegations from Canada and the EU, to provide insight on gender issues

 

Ms Sanyal has given powerful talks, trainings and consultations on Diversity & Inclusion (D&I), Value-based & Gender Intelligent Leadership, Public Policy, and Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) at some of India’s leading corporates such as Boeing, Taj Group, Reliance-Jio, Ernst & Young, Trilegal and educational institutions such as LSE, IIM (Kolkata, Lucknow), National Law Universities (Delhi, Lucknow), Delhi University, Amity University, National Police Academy, NICFS, CBI Academy and others.

 

A prolific speaker, she has also delivered keynotes for industrial bodies like FICCI, CII, PHDCC and SCOPE, and given a TEDx talk entitled “Be the CEO of Your Own Life”, addressing India’s next generation of Women Leaders. Ms Sanyal has an M.A. in Economics and holds certifications in Gender Studies and Management from Johns Hopkins University and London Business School.