Murali Chandrasekaran is a passionate filmmaker and philanthropist. He is a board member of Orthofocos.org, a NY based nonprofit and thrives on any project making a social impact. Networking is his top skill and enjoys the big picture at the same time, being pragmatic and commercial in carving the path towards it.

He discovered his purpose, through his volunteering experience of film production for this nonprofit serving kids in Ghana, Africa. His life changed after he made that trip to Ghana and produced a short documentary on the FOCOS hospital, that provides orthopedic care for terminal patients. Organically this idea of contributing your creative skills to benefit the nonprofit directly grew into a powerful and foundational mission of SOIL. He is the Co-Founder and current Board Chair, Global Head of Vetting Committee at SOIL, responsible for the vision, execution of strategy and sourcing the partnership with nonprofits from all sectors.

He lived in New York for a decade and moved to the Bay Area in 2016. Filmmaking and Social Impact are his path of truth and believes it religiously. He works at Goldman Sachs in Technology and has held various leadership positions over the years, but importantly has the accolade of co founding a skill based volunteering initiative at the firm. He lives in Cupertino with his wife Pooja Gautham, daughter Sanaa Selvan and son Aryan Selvan. 

Ravi Shankar is a stellar cinematographer, known in the Bay Area short film circuit and jumps right on, putting that skill to work when it comes to marking any social impact. He has worked on numerous creative film projects and carries the “executor” title as there is no better goto guy who can plan, shoot, edit and deliver your film in the shortest time and yet make no compromise on quality. He is an excellent listener and collaborator for any film Director.

So, it was a no-brainer for him to get organically pulled towards the very foundational mission of SOIL. He is the Co-Founder of SOIL and the Global Head of the Creative Committee at SOIL, which oversees execution of all film projects, recruiting the crew and volunteers.

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Ravi works at Bigfoot Biomedical, as a Design Assurance Lead and is passionately marching towards delivering a product that will disrupt the game on Type 1 Diabetes management. He lives in Union City with his wife Kalai Ramea, a Data Scientist who draws comics when she is not busy looking at numbers. They do occasionally argue who is the best!

Praveen Durairaj is a natural leader. He is gifted with the right package - persistence and perfection, on anything he works on. He is a filmmaker who holds a certificate in Direction from New York Film Academy. He has directed numerous short films and assisted in feature films.

When there was a notion of starting a SOIL chapter in New York, there was no better person to go to than Praveen. He is the Founding Board Member of SOIL and Head of New York Chapter Creative Committee that is responsible for execution of all film projects in New York including the recruiting of crew and volunteers. Praveen brings leadership, creativity and a stealth of filmmaking experience. He is passionate about making a difference in the community and SOIL fits the tag perfectly.

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He is a community organizer and is well known for organizing networking events for the North Jersey residents. He is also a Cricket team captain and has played actively for many years in the NJ Cricket leagues. He lives in Nutley, NJ with his wife Uma Maheswari who aside from being a software programmer is an avid dancer and helps Praveen organize community events. They are expecting a new family member soon!

Vidya Palaniswamy is a passionate social worker, designer and mentor. She firmly believes in sustainable social impact and persistently works towards it. She infuses design thinking in her approaches to life and work

She is currently the President of Association for India’s Development (AID) - Bay Area chapter and carries the experience of supporting change makers in India and organizing several talk series and events for AID in US

Vidya cares a lot about the local community and the social issues that confront us globally. Her passion for participatory social work and for enabling creative talent to align with causes, got her to be a Founding Board Member and a Lead of Creative Committee at SOIL. She is responsible for content creation, quality measurement and tracking the KPI for all projects 

Vidya lives with her partner, Raj Ponnusamy in Sunnyvale, CA. An avid traveler & an evangelist for sustainability, Vidya enjoys producing thought provoking works.