Samita Thapa

Samita leads the research for the Gender Benchmark, which assesses the world’s most influential companies on their performance on gender equality and women’s empowerment. She has always been passionate about issues like gender and digital inclusion and believes that sustainable development requires collaboration across all sectors: public, private and civil society.

Samita joined WBA as a research analyst in 2021 in the Gender Benchmark and has since also helped with research in the Digital Inclusion Benchmark and the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark. Prior to joining WBA, Samita worked as a researcher at a sustainability consulting firm in Santiago, Chile, assisting publicly listed Latin American companies to strengthen their sustainability strategies and reporting against the S&P Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Before Chile, Samita worked with the World Economic Forum and the International Organization for Migration in Geneva organizations as well as various non-profits in Nepal focused on women’s leadership and grassroots empowerment. During her time in the U.S. with TechChange, she was also an Emerging Global Leaders-Atlas Corps Fellow in Washington, D.C. Samita holds a MA in Development Studies from the Graduate Institute of Geneva (IHEID) and a BA in History from Goshen College in the United States. Born and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal, she considers herself a global citizen and is currently based in Turin, Italy.