MN5 aims to change the world by empowering the women in it

Over the years, Lakewood Ranch resident Simi Ranajee has sat on boards of large charity organizations like the American Cancer Society and American Patients Rights Association. Along the way, she made friends with other board members.

“We would talk about how we love these great boards but sometimes when you’re on them you don’t really get to impact the daily lives of people,” she recalls. “And we thought, ‘Is there something we can do?’”

As it turns out, yes. 

In 2019, Ranajee recruited nine of her fellow philanthropists to form Mission Neem 5, themed around a tree found in India and nearby countries celebrated for its wide-ranging environmental and medicinal effects. “It wasn’t just transforming health,” Ranajee asserts. “It was creating employment opportunities for women. Mission Neem 5 became a platform to educate, uplift and empower women and the families they support through sustainable, organic solutions.”

The organization is now more commonly called MN5. Its eclectic array of initiatives tend to fall in line with the interests of the board members, who live in and around Lakewood Ranch, as well as Chicago, New York and London. 

Among their efforts:

• Drop of Neem, created by board member Jennifer Masi, which provides mini-grants to women who are impacting their communities.
• Five $250 scholarships for students to participate in the Leadership Manatee program.
• A $1,000 grant to Jennifer Daughtry of Bayside Community Church for a mission trip to Zimbabwe.
• Board member Lori Eshoo works with Lisa Lawler of First Citizens Bank to educate women in financial literacy.

MN5’s all-volunteer board has no top-down management structure, no CEO, and no titles other than “member.” That’s by design, Ranajee says, adding the annual budget ranges from $25,000 to $50,000. “We want to make an impact fast,” she explains, “and there’s no incentive for us to be this huge nonprofit because we’re all just doing what we can do.” 

The Neem team may have a lofty mission, but they have fun, too. Most of the organization’s fundraising comes from events like Sweet Home Chicago, a party held last November at Country Club East in Lakewood Ranch, the Hollywood/Bollywood Bash, held in 2023 and 2024 (and earmarked for 2025) and others.

Winner, winner

MN5’s eclectic nature reflects Ranajee’s life of 57 years. She was born Simriti Chaddha in Delhi, India while her parents were visiting their native land from the U.S. When she was 3, her parents returned to America for good, and raised their two daughters in Elk Grove Village, a suburb of Chicago. She was brought up in a socially conservative household — “my first date was the prom,” Ranajee says — that stressed an obligation to make positive contributions to the community. 

Education, too. She earned a bachelor’s in marketing and finance at University of Illinois, got her MBA from Loyola University of Chicago and, in 2013, a doctorate in public health from Virginia Commonwealth University. 

In 1990, when she was 22, her aunt signed her up for the Miss India Illinois pageant. “I didn’t know about it,” Ranajee recounts. “‘She said, ‘You’re tall, you’re pretty, you can do this.’” So she did. And she won. She moved on to Miss India USA — and she won there, too. Then the ultimate rung of the ladder: Ranajee was crowned the first Miss India Worldwide. She won a diamond ring, some scholarship money and a round-trip ticket to India. 

Unexpected detours

Instead of basking in her newfound status as a pageant queen and waving to crowds from the backseat of convertibles, Ranajee traveled to India with the aim of advocating for “zero population growth,” which the country was pushing at the time. She arranged a van and bodyguards to travel the country educating people. She arrived in villages equipped with condoms, and attempted to persuade men to lead families of “two adults, two children,” she says. It did not go well. “None of them listened to me,” she recalls.

Photo by Dex Honea

So she pivoted to meeting with young women whose husbands expected them to have as many children — preferably male — as possible. Many of the women knew nothing about ovulation and had been led to believe certain sexual positions could lead to birthing boys. She handed out ovulation watches and calendars to the women, with the underlying message, “When you’re ovulating, cross your legs if you don’t want any more kids,” Ranajee says. 

She married Nav Ranajee, a fellow Indian-American in 2000. But it was not an arranged marriage, as remains the case in some Indian-American families. She laughs at the notion. “My parents thought I was punking them when I said I was dating an Indian guy,” Ranajee recalls. “I met Nav at a bar in Chicago. He was born and raised in Philly. You know what the name of the bar was? Karma.”

Ranajee’s professional career has largely been in communications and marketing in the medical industry. She worked for Edelman, a global PR company, as a senior vice president in health care, and is currently a managing director for Johnson Controls, a multinational corporation that produces HVAC, fire and security systems for buildings.

The couple has a son, Surain, 21, and an 18-year-old daughter, Sarisa. Both were born on April 1. In 2016, the family moved from the Chicago area to the Country Club neighborhood of Lakewood Ranch to be closer to family. 

A year later, Ranajee was diagnosed with lung cancer and needed surgery. She flatlined during the operation — and remembers a death experience. 

“I was happy. I was done,” she says. “I was like, ‘I lived a good life, had some incredible experiences.’ But both my kids’ faces kept coming to me, and it was like, ‘I’m not done. I’m not done. I need to go back. Please let me go back.’”

Her wish was granted. She’s back with her family — and doing charity work.