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Stanford spotlights Indian-origin sisters inspired by seva
Excerpt: The profile traces how Simran and Krsna Mohnani's upbringing in an Indian immigrant family led them to Stanford GSB and careers focused on social impact.
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Staff Reporter - Thu, 06, Aug 2026
- 02:28 EDT
- 29
Mohnani sisters / Stanford Graduate School of Business
Growing up in Malta to Indian immigrant parents, sisters Simran Mohnani and Krsna Mohnani were raised with the Indian value of seva — selfless service to the community. That principle shaped two very different career paths, one in engineering and the other in medicine, before eventually bringing them together as classmates at Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB).
The sisters, the first-ever Stanford GSB students from Malta, say the lessons they learned at home inspired their ambitions to use technology, entrepreneurship and innovation to improve people's lives.
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Growing up in Malta with Indian immigrant parents, the Mohnani sisters absorbed the principle of seva — selfless service to the community — which fueled how each envisioned her career, according to a column on the Stanford Graduate School of Business website.
Simran was inspired as a child by futuristic gadgets featured in the animated series Powerpuff Girls. She saw engineering as a way to develop technologies that could benefit society on a large scale.
"I saw engineering as a vehicle for scaling up innovation and bringing it down into the hands of the masses, where I really think it can make a difference," she said.
After studying chemical engineering at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, Simran worked at Cadbury before leading Deloitte's Circular Economy Innovation practice across Europe. Concerned about the impact of climate change on island nations like Malta, she focused on climate technology and sustainable industrial innovation.
At Stanford GSB, she took courses on investing and venture-building, including Stanford Climate Ventures and Energy Finance, and worked on the industrial climate deal team as part of the GSB Impact Fund.
Her younger sister, Krsna, chose medicine because of her desire to care for people. She earned a medical degree from the University of East Anglia and later completed a biomedical engineering degree at Imperial College London before working as a frontline doctor during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alongside her clinical work, she held an honorary research fellowship focused on mental health screening for asylum-seeking children.
Together, these experiences inspired her to focus on socioeconomic determinants that brought the same patients back, again and again. She spent two years as an associate in London at the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company, working in life sciences, health care and private equity before she, too, decided an MBA would provide both the theoretical and practical education she was seeking in policy and health care innovation.
Despite pursuing different professions, both sisters realized they wanted to better understand entrepreneurship, investing and innovation, leading them independently to Stanford GSB.
Krsna said she was drawn to the school because of its location in Silicon Valley, its emphasis on social impact and its culture of openness.
"The culture of possibility ... is expanding the ceiling of what you know, changing the perception of what is possible," told Stanford.
The sisters also spoke about the lack of female role models while growing up in Malta.
"I remember looking for these people just to know, OK, if someone else has done it, I can do it too," Krsna said.
"If I can't find these people, we're just going to have to become the people I needed growing up."
After graduation, Simran plans to scale climate technology ventures, while Krsna hopes to work at the intersection of entrepreneurship and health technology.
The sisters also share a long-term goal of launching a female-focused investment fund that would support innovations in both planetary and human health, combining their respective expertise in climate and health care.
Discover more at New India Abroad.
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