Mrs. Rajashree Birla
Non-Executive Director
Mrs. Rajashree Birla is an exemplar in the area of community initiatives and rural development. Mrs. Birla chairs the Aditya Birla Centre for Community Initiatives and Rural Development, the Group’s apex body responsible for development projects.
She oversees the social and welfare driven work across all the Group’s major companies. The footprint of the Centre’s work straddles over 7,000 villages, reaching out to 9 million people. The Group runs 24 hospitals. The Group reaches out to well over 100,000 students through its network of 56 formal schools and non-formal educational institutes. Of these, girls constitute 50%. Both its hospitals as well as schools are ‘Not For Profit’ institutions.
Mrs. Birla is the Chairperson of the FICCI – Aditya Birla CSR Centre for Excellence, Habitat for Humanity (India) and is on the Board of the Asia Pacific Committee as well as Habitat’s Global Committee. She is the Chairperson of FICCI’s first ever Expert Committee on CSR. She is on the Board of BAIF Development Research Foundation, Pune and also served on the Board of Directors of the CSR Committee of SBI Foundation and is a Trustee of the Gujarat Vidyapith. As a patron of arts and culture, she is the President of the “Sangit Kala Kendra”, a Centre for performing arts, as well as the INT-ABCPA (Indian National Theatre-Aditya Birla Centre for Performing Arts).
In recognition of the exemplary work done by Mrs. Rajashree Birla, leading national and international organisations have showered accolades upon her. Among these the most outstanding one has been that of the Government of India which bestowed the “Padma Bhushan” Award in 2011 on Mrs. Rajashree Birla in the area of “Social Work”. At the G20 EMPOWER Meet in Ahmedabad, the G20 EMPOWER Award for ‘Lifetime Achievement’ was conferred upon Mrs. Birla. Yet another prestigious award accorded to Mrs. Birla is BRICS ‘Living Legend and Icon for Community Excellence and Lifetime Achievement Award’, bestowed upon her by the erstwhile President, Mr. Ram Nath Kovind.
Furthermore, for Mrs. Birla’s unrelenting endeavours towards polio eradication, she was honoured with the much coveted “Polio Eradication Champion” Award by the Government of India. Likewise, the “Global Golden Peacock Award for CSR” was conferred upon her by Dr. Ola Ullsten, the Former Prime Minister of Sweden in Portugal. Among other distinctive awards received by Mrs. Birla, feature the Economic Times’ prestigious Award: Corporate Citizen of the Year, twice in a decade, first in 2003 and again in 2012; the All-India Management Association’s “Corporate Citizen of the Year Award”, the IOD’s “Distinguished Fellowship Award” and the “FICCI FLO Golden Laurel Award”.