If you are the kind of person who listens to conservative advice, you may do okay in life, but you probably won't ever be a fantastic leader. You have to take risks, and you also have to go against conventional wisdom, because conventional wisdom doesn't make for startling advances in society.

If you want to scale-up, the first thing you have to do is to expand your own team.

It really pains me greatly to hear from graduate students that graduate education is a lower priority here.

If policy makers and program managers participate in an interdisciplinary assessment team, make informal visits to local families and have in-depth conversations with local providers and health authorities, the real needs and complex challenges of organizing good reproductive health services become apparent.

It's very important in a leadership role not to place your ego at the foreground and not to judge everything in relationship to how your ego is fed.

I'm the youngest of 12 children. And although I was the youngest, I tried to organize things in my family. When there were disputes, I tried to mediate.

Because in traditional Hindu culture menstruation is associated with a variety of social taboos, prolonged menstrual bleeding produced conflicts within families. The whole idea of fertility regulation was still extremely new in this setting and many husbands and other family members were angry when they found out that women had decided on their own to use the method and had gone to the clinic in secret.