Dr. Charu Smita Malik is currently working as Assistant Professor in NCSL. She completed her Ph.D. in the field of Educational Policy, Planning and Administration from NIEPA that involved an Internship with the erstwhile Planning Commission. Her thesis was based on mixed-methods approach to understand issues related with equity in planning for secondary education, at a time when Universalization of Secondary Education was launched nation-wide. As a doctoral student, she supported various capacity development programmes in Department of Educational Planning and undertook sessions for International Diploma in Educational Planning and Administration at NIEPA. As a Senior Consultant in the National Centre for School Leadership, she has vast experience in mega-scale conceptualization and implementation of the National Programme on School Leadership Development. She is member of the core committee of NISHTHA, a country-wide capacity development programme, under the aegis of Ministry of Education for elementary, secondary and pre-primary school stages, where she is involved in developing cutting-edge materials.

She is also a resource person for NISHTHA-EMRS for Ministry of Tribal Affairs and has developed capacities of school heads in schools associated with Ministry of Jal Shakti. Since 2013, she is credited with building leadership capacities of school and system level functionaries of the government and the government-aided sector across the country. She has designed courses for and taught One Month Certificate and One Year Post Graduate Diploma programmes in School Leadership. Her research interests and publications cover themes of educational planning and policy, equity, diversity, school leadership, rural and disadvantaged contexts and community participation in education. She has provided critical comments to and edited the IIEP-UNESCO project on School Management Committees: A Move Towards Open Government in Education in India in 2021. As part of changing public narrative on government schools, she has led many episodes of Live streaming on leadership best practices, in collaboration with CIET-NCERT. At present, she is designing the National Programme for System level leadership at NCSL to be made operational for educational functionaries at district, block and cluster levels- taken as a whole- for school transformation. In addition, she is the national coordinator for the following states and UTs working closely with their School Leadership Academies- Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Haryana.