
Sudhanshu Kaushik
Washington DC and New Delhi
Sudhanshu founded Exalt to bring together what he has spent more than a decade doing: political communication, government relations and building institutions. He has written speeches for India’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations at the General Assembly, briefed more than 60 members of the US Congress, and advised on communications through electoral cycles in The Gambia, Zimbabwe, Moldova, Malaysia, Malta, India and the United States.
He founded the Young India Foundation, India’s first youth political advocacy group, and led it from 2015 to 2024. Its civic campaigns with Meta and the Election Commission reached 500 million people, and its Why25 campaign with The Body Shop gathered 25 million signatures to lower the age to run for the Lok Sabha, reaching a bill in the Rajya Sabha. He also founded the Centre for Youth Policy, which advises young elected officials across 45 democracies, and Exalt Data, which studies the Indian American vote.
He is the author of The Future Is Ours (HarperCollins India, 2023) and is completing a Doctor of International Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS. He holds an MBA from Chicago Booth, where he was an Edwardson Civic Scholar, an MSc from Oxford and a BA from NYU. His commentary has appeared on NDTV, India Today, the BBC and DW, and in The Washington Post and The New York Times.
- Obama Foundation USA Leader, 2025
- Kofi Annan NextGen Democracy Prize, 2025
- Grímsson Fellow, 2026–28
- McCloy Fellowship, 2026
- TED speaker


