Board of Directors

Geeta Aiyer

Co-Founder and Board Chair

President & Founder of Boston Common Asset Management, LLC, Geeta combines over 30 years of experience in finance, with passion for environmental and social justice. Under her leadership, Boston Common has built a strong investment record, and meaningfully improved the policies and practices of portfolio companies through impactful, proactive Shareowner Engagement. The firm is a “Best for the World” honoree within the global B Corp community.

For her diversity advocacy, Geeta is on Boston Business Journal’s 2021 Power 50 Movement Makers’ list. In 2020, she was YW Boston’s Academy of Women Achievers awardee. In 2016, Geeta was honored by Investment News, as an Innovator whose new ideas and tools have propelled the industry forward. Geeta received the Joan Bavaria Award at the CERES conference in 2015 for Building Sustainability into the Capital Markets.

Geeta serves on the Board and Investment Committee of NRDC. She is also on the board of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR). Geeta has previously served on the boards of the Sierra Club Foundation and UN PRI. She has an MBA, Harvard Business School and MA and BA (Hons) degrees from Delhi University, India. She is a Chartered Financial Analyst.

Anu Chitrapu

Board Member, Treasurer

Anu Chitrapu works at Bank of America and serves as the Executive Sponsor for the Asian Leadership Network in Boston. She is a seasoned and dynamic business leader with a track record of motivating teams to step up their performance and a natural evangelist and influencer with the ability to get people excited about an organization and its mission.

Anu is passionate about women empowerment, eliminating gender based violence, education for girls and protecting the environment. She is a co-founder of Nyrvaana, a social enterprise with a mission of saving fabric from landfill while providing employment to disadvantaged women.

Anu is the current President of TiE-Boston; TiE is the world’s largest not-for-profit network dedicated to helping startups grow. Anu holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Nirmala Garimella

Board Member

Nirmala Garimella champions national and international efforts to support women, children, and families. An emphasis on cross-cultural understanding is reflected in many dimensions of her work, as she advocates for gender equity and greater awareness of women and girls issues in the global south.

Nirmala is co-founder of Circle of Hope, a giving circle of women philanthropists in New England. She is also the co-founder of the community website www.lokvani.com, that covers local Indian Americans news in Boston. She and her husband, Paramesh, are supporting a school program in India which enables 300 girls to access digital tools in the classroom and improve their learning outcomes.

Nirmala also served on the Board of the Indian Americans of Lexington and the Lexington Education Foundation. She was one of 20 women nominated for India New England’s Woman of the Year 2016 and also featured in Women who win in 2020. She was one of the key members involved in the subcommittee of Demographic Change in Lexington which was recognized as a 2015 Harvard Ash Center Bright Idea in Government.

As a Board Member at DAWN Worldwide, Nirmala continues her engagement with women’s issues and empowerment, as her philosophy of paying it forward and investing in others.