Mr. Girish Sohani received his B.Tech. degree from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Bombay. Later, he obtained a postgraduate diploma in Business Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Profoundly interested in rural and community development, Mr. Girish Sohani, right after his studies, joined the BAIF Development Research Foundation to work for the rural poor. BAIF (Bharatiya Agro Industries Foundation) is engaged in creating opportunities of gainful self-employment for the rural families, especially disadvantaged sections, ensuring sustainable livelihood, enriched environment, improved quality of life and good human values. This is being achieved through development research, effective use of local resources, extension of appropriate technologies and upgradation of skills and capabilities with community participation.

The engineering and management education received at premier institutions makes Mr. Sohani a perfect fit for the job at BAIF, where he held several important positions before occupying the current post. Here, Mr. Sohani was responsible for strategic planning, coordination and backup support to farmer-managed community irrigation schemes, project planning and execution of development projects for generation of rural livelihoods, monitoring of research projects in renewable energy technologies, etc. He also gained professional experience in different areas such as village production systems, rural agribusiness and marketing, project financing and financial management, public-private partnership, institution building, natural resource management and livelihoods, training and capacity building.

Mr. Sohani is on the Boards of several development organisations. He has undertaken consultancy assignments for programme review, strategic planning, exit protocols, institutional development and planning, etc., on behalf of IRDC-Canada (International Development Research Centre), NRI-India, GITEC (Government Information Technology Executive Council), Sir Ratan Tata Trust. He has visited many countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, and Canada, in connection with business and research work.