Giving Pledge Signers On Why The 15-Year-Old Group Still Matters

Rohini and Nandan Nilekani
Citizenship: India
Net worth: $3 billion
Year they joined the pledge: 2017

Areas of giving: Education, climate & environment, gender, mental health
Nandan Nilekani is cofounder and chairman of Indian IT services giant Infosys. His wife Rohini, a former journalist, runs her own philanthropic operation separate from Nandan’s. They both support their EkStep foundation, a platform dedicated to improving literacy and numeracy.

​​On responsibility: “Sooner rather than later I realized that wealth comes with both responsibility and opportunity. The responsibility of wealth. ….coming from a country like India, is to help make your society better,” says Rohini.

On failure: “Like every other philanthropist we learned by doing, we failed, and we learned from our failure, or at least tried to. …I wish we would look at failure seriously in the Giving Pledge, too. That we get to a safe space to share that ‘I tried this, it didn’t work, and I learned something.’ And to admit that we can fail and we do fail. How do you learn from it? How do you share it?”

What concerns her now: “I look at what is happening in society, which new problems are happening, especially with young people, what’s happening with mental health, especially of young people, especially in the digital age. How do we equip civil society organizations for operating in the digital age?”

Forbes