Introduction

ElsaMarie D’Silva is currently the Founder & Managing Director of Red Dot Foundation (Safecity) which is a platform that crowdsources personal experiences of sexual violence and abuse in public spaces. Since Safecity started in Dec 2012, it has become the largest crowd map on the issue in India, Kenya, Cameroon and Nepal. Safecity is the awardee of the UN AOC and BMW group’s Intercultural Innovation Award. ElsaMarie is currently a mentee of the US State Department’s Fortune Program and a fellow with Rotary Peace, Aspen New Voices and Vital Voices. She is listed as one of BBC Hindi’s 100 Women and has won Female Entrepreneur of the Year Award by Dusan Stojanovic (European Angel Investor of the Year 2013) and The Digital Woman Award in Social Impact by She The People. She has written articles that have appeared in CNN, Huffington Post, WIP amongst others. She has spoken about her work at the Aspen Ideas Festival, at TEDx MidAtlantic, UN Women, State Department, Vital Voices South to South Leadership Summit. She has been a panelist for NDI, She the People and hosted a roundtable at CityLab London 2015. Prior to Safecity, she was in the aviation industry for 20 years where she worked with Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines. Her last portfolio was Vice President Network Planning & Charters where she oversaw the planning and implementation of 500 daily flights.