Leading with Trust: Tarulatta’s Journey to Stronger Leadership

For 29 years, Tarulatta Chauhan has dedicated her life to advancing women’s rights and empowerment through ANANDI (Area Networking and Development Initiatives). Based in Godhra, Gujarat, she leads a team of 42 professionals driving programs that support women’s leadership, economic empowerment, and youth development across two administrative blocks(A block is an administrative division in many South Asian Countries). 

Founded in 1995, ANANDI works to ensure that rural women’s voices and concerns are central to broader development efforts. The organization empowers women and young leaders to champion social justice, sustainable development, and accountable local governance. Its work reaches tribal communities, historically marginalized communities, and marginalized women and youth — primarily across Gujarat’s eastern tribal belt and the feudal regions of Saurashtra. Through its community-led approach, ANANDI has directly impacted more than 50,000 women and youth, helping build resilience and opportunity among some of the state’s most vulnerable populations.

Her team works with more than 1,200 women with advanced training in farming, supporting their move to organic agriculture and helping them develop personally while gaining the skills to offer counseling support to youth.

Despite her experience, Tarulatta faced a recurring leadership challenge.

“I wanted to address how to ensure we all work as a team for the different programs. How do I keep the team together and move ahead towards the organization’s goal and vision?”

As she explains, managing team dynamics had become difficult.

“Sometimes I would just end up doing things myself, unable to effectively communicate when timelines were not being met. I would feel frustrated and get angry at myself.”

This challenge had persisted for years. But when Tarulatta joined the Leadership for Growth program by Global Good x Amani, supported by Breitling through the Better Diamond Fund, something began to shift.

The six-month program was designed to strengthen the leadership capacity of social entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders across Gujarat. It focused on women’s economic empowerment, sustainable social innovation, and long-term organizational growth. Participants engaged in immersive learning that combined in-person training, online modules, and coaching.

Tarulatta was a participant in the program’s third Gujarat cohort. Her dedication stood out — she would travel four to five hours by train or bus from Godhra to attend each in-person session. Guided and supported by facilitators and coaches, she embarked on a journey of self-discovery and growth. Through this mentorship and coaching, Tarulatta gained a clearer understanding of her unique leadership style and aspirations. More importantly, she learned how to integrate specific skills and practical tools into her daily work to effectively address the challenges and limitations she had when she first joined the program.

For Tarulatta, the experience was transformative.

“Before joining the program, I would always feel depressed when there were failures, but having attended this program and hearing from different leaders from different organisations, I understood that in the social impact sector, experiencing failures is natural and they are bound to happen because we are working with people. What we need to work on is seeking support, learning from others, adopting new strategies. It was a relief to see I am not the only person going through these feelings and experiences.”

Through mentorship and coaching, Tarulatta began to understand her leadership style more deeply and developed new strategies to address her earlier challenges.

She shared that although she had attended different workshops in the past, this particular program addressed her challenge around trust and delegation within the team. “I needed to give my team members their individual space to operate with some level of autonomy if I wanted to create a space of trust and collectiveness.”
She also mentioned that one key lesson she will always use from the program is “Looking at the goal and objective, and not just focusing on completing the different activities, while using a result-oriented management system.”

Putting these lessons into practice, Tarulatta started taking small, intentional steps.
She began giving her team more responsibility with clear guidance and accountability. This freed her to focus on monitoring quality and progress rather than handling every detail.

“I have started holding monthly reflecting meetings with program officers and I use this as a platform for teams to share their success and challenges and how they overcame this, so that teams learn from one another, earlier during these meetings, we would just talk about activities that have been completed. This process has also enabled a collaborative environment within the organisation.”

She also introduced new systems to track progress.

“For one of our programs we created a dashboard which looks at progress along with the person responsible for that geographic area, this enabled a structured a reflective discussion during our meetings, like – how is this community organiser able to reach so many women, what strategies is she using and what can I learn from her.”

The results have been clear. Her team is now more open, collaborative, and willing to learn from both successes and failures.

Today, Tarulatta leads with renewed confidence and clarity.

“Through this journey, I would say that today I am a leader who has the confidence to look ahead. I aim to create more female leaders who can take on my roles and responsibilities. I am a leader who can effectively communicate my views and work with everyone.”