Sonali has focused her career on the intersection of business, management and social progress. She serves as Evaluation and Learning Lead at the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies.

Prior to Stanford Seed, Sonali served as director of the Stanford Value Chain Innovation Initiative, a research initiative led by Stanford GSB professors Hau Lee and Haim Mendelson which explores how technology, sustainability, and trade are disrupting global value chains. There she fostered research and hosted executive conferences to explore topics such as technology in agribusiness, responsible supply chains, shared value in agriculture, Brazilian beef and deforestation, last-mile delivery in e-commerce, 3D printing, cross-border e-commerce logistics between the U.S. and China, and Internet of Things technology.

Sonali has also worked at the Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum, where she served as project director of a three-year study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on health delivery logistics in Zambia, researched sustainable supply chains and value chain strengthening in the Gambia, Ghana, China, and India. Before her Stanford career, Sonali worked in supply chain finance at PepsiCo, served as finance and administration director at an HIV/AIDS organization in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco, was a consultant to several non-profit organizations and served on the board of a child care organization.

Sonali holds an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and a BS in Finance from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.