- Briefly describe your PhD research interests.* (750 characters remaining) I am the co-founder of a non-profit dedicated to creating joyful, democratic and safe learning environments. While we have many thriving spaces, the scaling process has been challenging and building a method to assess and evaluate the spaces has been difficult. My research interest is to build both formative and summative assessment methods that are participatory in nature and do not take away from the agency of the learner or the facilitator in each space. I am interested to understand how an assessment or evaluation takes into account the cultural context of each space and helps promote equity particularly in marginalised populations. - Provide the name of one Stanford faculty member, in any department, whose research interests best align with yours and who could serve as a potential research advisor. You do not need to contact or seek approval from this faculty member before listing them here. - Brigid Barron - Shelley Goldman - Denise Pope ✓ - Jelena Obradovic - Antero Godina Garcia - Arnetha Ball - How will your Knight-Hennessy Scholars experience prepare you to realize your immediate and long-term intentions?* (Limit: 250 words) My current goal is to reimagine learning and build democratic environments where learners can craft their own journeys and experience the joy of learning. Though learning and education has always been my area of focus I very quickly realised how important it was to think of change from a lens of systems. Many of the children we worked with suffered from malnutrition, or child hood trauma and though that was not our direct interest, it was something we were forced to contend with. Over time I realised how building partnerships is the key to create any social change. It is not always easy to build such partnerships and find driven individuals with expertise. In the short term my hope is that the Knight Hennessy experience will provide me with access, connections and knowledge from global leaders whose inputs can help me build spaces with a better understanding of the entire system. I fundamentally believe that to truly create impact at a large scale one must work with governments and influence policy. My long term goal is to advocate for policy change and also to create grassroots political leadership in India. KHS’s profound engagement with policy, leadership, and global networks will not only sharpen my advocacy skills but also, crucially, facilitate a two-way knowledge exchange between my context and the global community. - Made someone proud of you - My parents have always wanted me to return to India after completing my undergraduate education and help those that are underrepresented and marginalised. When I made the unlikely decision of returning and starting a non-profit my parents were incredibly proud. - Were most challenged - We have always wanted to build open spaces where all children would be allowed to participate. In one of our learning spaces we had one child who was particularly troubled and was threatening the safety of the other children. Banning the child knowing fully well what that might do to him was one of the most difficult things I have done in my life. - Fell short of expectations - My best friend was unable to attend a semester of college because of financial challenges. I was not there for her and did not so much as reach out to her to find out how she was doing. - Please tell us eight improbable facts about you. These could include: facts that people wouldn’t expect to be true and/or facts that others are surprised to learn about you. - I co-founded a non-profit and startup at the same time running both successfully. I found that having two projects at the same time often helped me. - I moved back to India after college, rejecting high paying jobs to start a non profit. I wanted to use the best years of my life to solve problems I cared about. - I am obsessed with Chai. I made over 1000 cups for my fellow students at GT. - I am engaged to my partner after seven years of a long distance relationship. - My parents are first cousins - the genetic implications scare me. - No one in my immediate family has been employed beyond part time or internship roles. They have mostly been entrepreneurs. - My friends and I spent months in college designing a board game. - I have a collection of 100+ beer bottle caps from 30+ countries. - Connect the dots. How have the influences in your life shaped you?* (Limit: 600 words) My tryst with education started right at birth. My mom is an educator and has been teaching for the last three decades. Right from an early age I enjoyed learning and helping others learn. I would often have friends over helping them with homework or preparing for exams together. This continued through to college where I took up the position of a tutor at the College of Computing. I didn't realise it until after undergrad, but the joy of discovery was one of the things that gave me most happiness. I moved to India determined that I wanted to teach. I started to reflect on education and my own learning experience. There were two phases in my life where I felt that I had learnt the most - at an early age while in a Montessori school and during one summer in college where a friend and I had hacked together a web application. The common theme in these periods - Freedom. The two times in my life where I was left to my own devices and learnt on my own was where I thrived the most. When I studied scientific literature, particularly the Finnish model of education I found that there too agency was highly valued. After moving back to India, I volunteered in five different non profits and spoke to leaders in many more. I found that most of the non-profits were following a "banking model" where knowledge flowed from teacher to student and though they might have claimed otherwise, there was little to no self-exploration. The few places that allowed for it were maker spaces centred around vocational training. I realised that there was a gap that needed to be explored. When I found likeminded individuals it felt very natural to start our own space! When we started our space children took to us immediately and it was clear that we had something special. The hypothesis held true and most children thrived when they were responsible for their own learning. However, there was also something else at play. It wasn't just that the children were enjoying the freedom, there was also a degree of unspoken trust that had been established. I realised that my colleague who comes from an underrepresented community was responsible for this. Though I could communicate with the children and we grew very close, the shared experiences that he brought were key. It became even more clear that this was indeed the case when there was an increase in Muslim children the moment we hired a Muslim facilitator. Freedom was a part of the secret sauce but it was also important to have role models and facilitators children could relate to. When Covid-19 struck we could not work in the community but we saw how some youth took leadership to help younger children learn. We realised that our initiative could only thrive with community participation and involvement. The moment the community adopted the space as their own it began to thrive. The old adage held true - "It takes a village to raise a child." My personal journey is one that is intertwined with my non-profit. The principles of joy, democracy and community centric are ones that I carry with me in any work that I do. I imagine a future where everyone has the opportunity to experience the joy of learning in learning spaces that are safe, inclusive and democratic and I hope that I will play a role in creating that future.