My journey in building educational non-profits and digital technologies is founded on the idea that curiosity and compassion are innate capacities that can be nurtured and strengthened through well-designed, collaborative learning environments. It is this idea that I hope to carry forward and contribute to with my doctoral studies, informing my decision to apply to Stanford GSE’s PhD in Education, specializing in the Learning Sciences and Technology Design (LSTD) program and exploring it in interaction with the Developmental and Psychological Sciences (DAPS) study area. I started my journey volunteering at educational non-profits where I observed the typical "banking model" of education with teachers "depositing" information, skills, and values into students rather than nurturing their innate capacities. What I imagined, instead, was a learning center, co-created with children instilling values of collective ownership and responsibility, allowing them the agency to craft their own learning journeys. With this tenet, I co-founded a non-profit Vismaya Kalike and in 2018 we started our first space in Bangalore. As the initiative scaled, Paulo Freire's 'praxis' approach was instrumental in helping me adapt to the overwhelming community response. I used systems thinking to uncover other often neglected elements in the environment that influenced education and learning. Researching these system components and their interconnectedness helped me identify interventions that would create virtuous cycles in the community.  Children from vulnerable communities often experience Adverse Childhood Experiences and studying the work of Dr. Nadine Burke Harris showed us the importance of creating healthy relationships and trauma-sensitive spaces. After conducting extensive research, interviewing parents, teachers and children we set up a "Peace Room" where children can take time when they're distressed and instituted a "Circle Time" to encourage mutual emotional support.  Sometimes the most crucial challenges we encountered were completely tangential to education, requiring a deep understanding and a connection with children. The lack of clean water was one such challenge. Concerns about their poor hygiene had created a strong sense of shame for many learners. When we collaborated with community stakeholders to establish a reliable water supply at our learning space this barrier was removed and the number of children participating at our center increased.  My biggest learning came from continuous observation of children and identifying that many believed that they could not learn. John Holt in his book notes how "Intelligent children act as if they thought the universe made some sense". For many of our children, school made no sense; it was simply arbitrary rules made up by adults. We studied Prof. Mitchell Resnick's work and created self-evaluative learning material with sufficient scaffolding allowing the children to explore independently and build their own knowledge of the world. A core research interest that emerged from my experiences is understanding the construction of educational spaces where learning is deeply intertwined with collaboration and co-creation. Particularly, I want to study the processes that enable the participation of children in the design of their learning environment and help them cultivate curiosity and empathy. Furthermore, I am concerned about ensuring the replicability of the positive outcomes generated by these interventions at scale and over time.  Despite expanding to five learning spaces to serve pandemic affected communities, I saw previously successful processes and systems become significantly less effective as we were riddled with operational and administrative issues. As an education researcher, I realized it is critical for me to evaluate the robustness of our learning models to environmental shocks and to understand different methodologies following significant difficulty in replicating results across communities. The pandemic pivoted me towards the potential of digital technologies to create unstructured, self-exploratory, virtual learning spaces similar to our brick-and-mortar establishment. While parallelly working on this virtual transformation for children, I co-founded CraterClub, a live-streaming platform for designers, developers and stock traders. We studied learning patterns among people who were a part of live streams by creators going about their day. It was quite shocking to see how for many users the lack of an imposed structure was debilitating. Users often looked for external validation - certificates and "internet points" to drive them, often not learning at all but gaming the system for the rewards. For a small subset of intrinsically motivated learners though, CraterClub allowed for the formation of meaningful relationships, collaborations and deep learning. Although CraterClub's journey ended due to funding limitations, the data collected from the 100,000-user community gave me insights into the power of technology to experiment at scale. This experience inspires me to explore through research how technology can be applied in various learning spaces, specifically ones that deal with vulnerable children who have low and inequitable access to resources.  Experimenting with my own initiative and working at the grassroots level has given me a lot of perspective, a glimpse into the difficulties of research and an appreciation of the challenges that marginalized communities are facing. I find myself inspired by Dr. Brigid Barron's work with YouthLab and the lab’s investigation of technology as a means to create more equitable opportunities is aligned with my research agenda. Dr. Antero Garcia's work, particularly his dedication to world-building commitments in education, is closely in line with my ideas of a democratic learning space. Stanford GSE’s program and faculty group are particularly well-positioned to provide me with rigorous theoretical and methodological training to help me achieve my research goals and build a body of work that contributes both to the knowledge of the field and its implementation in practice. Thus far my work has always been in two different worlds either as a developer-entrepreneur working on technology or as a facilitator-administrator working in education. Juggling multiple roles, I've felt fulfilled by my contributions and gained a distinctive perspective. However, I want to synthesize my learnings and I believe that the Stanford GSE is well-suited to marry these two worlds. I hope that working in this research group will provide me with the guidance to leverage technology, develop processes, and create environments where every learner can craft their own journey to be the best versions of themselves.