Ritika Sharma Kurup, PhD, LISW-S
Founder & Principal

Ritika Kurup is a practitioner-scholar who works with coalitions and teams that are transforming unjust systems. Her scholarship is centered on understanding how community led, place-based work can facilitate sustainable systems change.

Ritika has over two decades of experience in establishing and leading large-scale efforts serving children and families in the U.S. and India. Most recently in a full-time staff role, she served as Senior Director of Learning and Activation at StriveTogether, a national nonprofit network of 70 communities across the country, where she established their data and learning division. She also served as the key strategist for the network’s Racial Equity Planning Team, shepherded the integration of racial equity benchmarks into StriveTogether’s theory of action, and facilitated the launch of systems indicators, a new body of work to measure progress in systems.

Before joining StriveTogether, Ritika served at Learn to Earn Dayton, a place-based partnership in Montgomery County, Ohio. During her tenure of over 7 years, she led multiple cradle-to-career initiatives, including the launch of a community-wide race equity education agenda, the establishment of Dayton’s first out-of-school collaborative, and Montgomery County’s Grade-Level Reading Campaign, which was recognized as an All-America City Award winner in 2017.

Her doctoral research, Role of Power and Autonomy in Place-Based Upward Mobility: A Mixed Methods Study from the Perspective of Community Members, demonstrated that autonomy is the mechanism through which opportunities translate into beliefs about upward mobility in marginalized communities.

Ritika holds a PhD in Social Work, a Master of Arts in Public Policy and Management, and a Master of Social Work from The Ohio State University. She was named a Children and Family Fellow by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in 2016 and inducted into the OSU College of Social Work’s Hall of Fame in 2021.