Sonika serves as the Lead for Professional Development vertical of Parag Initiative including the Library Educator’s Course in Hindi and the Children’s Library Course. As the core lead faculty, Sonika oversees implementation, content and strategic direction of the courses. Her areas of interest include development of literacy in the early years, literature for young children and academic development of teachers of young children. She led the Mathura Pilot Project, Reading Development Cell at the National Council of Educational Research and Training as one of the core team members. Her work with the reading and early literacy programmes at the NCERT spans nearly a decade. Sonika started her career as a primary school teacher in a village in Rajasthan and has taught in primary schools in Delhi for about six years. She has taught papers on pedagogy of language and children’s literature as a faculty at the Department of Elementary Education, Jesus and Mary College, University of Delhi. She has been involved extensively in-service programmes for teachers and teacher educators. She has designed and taught a paper on early language and literacy as guest faculty at I Am A Teacher. She has served on committees for textbook development (Delhi government, Hindi textbooks post-NCF), review of textbooks and review of children’s literature and committees for curriculum development of teacher education programmes. She has been a member of the Advisory Board to Room to Read. She holds a doctoral degree in education- early literacy from University of Delhi and was awarded the post-doctoral fellowship by the Indian Council of Social Science Research in 2019.