Shaifali leads the craft vertical at SEWA Cooperative Federation. The craft vertical offers design inputs, upskilling trainings, business strategy, linkages and hand-holding support to enable grassroots women’s handicraft cooperatives or collective enterprises to become viable. With a background in Art and Design from Sheth C.N College of Fine Arts, Ahmedabad, combined with experience of strategic liasoning and partnerships, Shaifali brings to the table creative and design insights as well as strategic business inputs. Prior to this, she was a design educator with over 3 decades of experience.
She has been instrumental in setting up a design centre and a Common Facility Centre so that artisan groups in the informal sector can access technologies and machinery that they otherwise would not have access to. She has also been instrumental in creating backward and forward linkages for these grassroots women’s enterprises. Her specialization is in the area of textiles, surface ornamentation, folk crafts and culture.
