Abhishek Gautam

Abhishek Gautam (he/him) is Director – Gender and Health at the International Center for Research on Women’s (ICRW) Asia Regional Office. He provides technical leadership across research, monitoring, evaluation and learning initiatives, with a focus on study design, large-scale data systems, quantitative and mixed-methods research, programme learning, and evidence use.

Abhishek brings two decades of experience in monitoring, evaluation and research across family planning, reproductive, maternal and child health, adolescent health, gender-based violence, HIV, water and sanitation, and gender equality. A statistician by training and demographer by profession, he holds a PhD in Statistics from Banaras Hindu University and an MPhil in Population Studies from the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai. He brings expertise in managing large-scale datasets, conducting advanced statistical analysis, developing monitoring tools, supervising data collection systems, and translating evidence into reports, presentations, publications, and programme learning products.

At ICRW, Abhishek’s work focuses on generating and applying evidence to inform policy and programmatic action on gender equality, gender-based violence, adolescent health, and reproductive health. He has led and contributed to studies and evaluations on masculinity, gender-based violence, son preference, adolescent agency, family planning, safe public spaces, and water, sanitation and hygiene across India and other Asian contexts. His work has examined links between gender norms, men’s attitudes, childhood experiences, intimate partner violence, and women’s and adolescents’ health and wellbeing. Through his work, he aims to strengthen the use of evidence for more responsive, equitable, and gender-transformative policies and programmes.

Beyond research, Abhishek contributes to institutional strengthening through business development, organisational capacity building, recruitment support, strengthening MEL systems across projects and partners, and digital transformation initiatives. He also has extensive experience in strengthening partner capacity in data management, analysis, interpretation, and use.

Prior to joining ICRW in 2011, Abhishek worked with the central monitoring and evaluation team at FHI 360 in New Delhi, where he supported data management, monitoring, and analysis across the six Avahan programme states and provided technical assistance to the Indian Council of Medical Research. Toward the later part of his tenure, he also led the Integrated Behavioral and Biological Assessment of the Avahan programme in Maharashtra as State Coordinator. Avahan was one of the largest HIV prevention programmes implemented at scale in India.

Abhishek has worked with a range of international donors and partners, including the United Nations Population Fund, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UN Women, the Ford Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, as well as civil society and community-based organizations across India.