Curiosity and compassion are innate capacities that can be nurtured and strengthened through well-designed, collaborative learning environments. This idea was foundational in my journey in building educational non-profits and digital technologies. I hope to carry it forward and contribute to it 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. In 2017, I started volunteering at educational non-profits, where I was a part of the typical ‘banking model’ of education with teachers ‘depositing’ information, skills, and values into students rather than nurturing their innate capacities. Instead, I imagined a learning center co-created with children instilling values of collective ownership and responsibility, allowing them the agency to craft their unique 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 often neglected factors 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 (ACEs) 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 and interviewing parents, teachers, and children we set up a ‘Peace Room’ where children can take time when distressed. We also 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 personal hygiene had created a strong sense of shame for many learners. We collaborated with community stakeholders to establish a reliable water supply at our learning space, removing this barrier and increasing the number of children participating at our center.  My most significant learning came from continuous observation of children and identifying that many believed that they could not learn. In his book, John Holt 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 just 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. Understanding the construction of educational spaces, where learning is deeply intertwined with collaboration and co-creation, is one of my core research interests. 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 the importance of evaluating the robustness of our learning models to environmental shocks and understanding different methodologies. 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 shocking to see how for many users the lack of an imposed structure was debilitating. Users often looked for external validation like certificates and ‘internet points’ to drive them. They were not actually learning but gaming the system for the rewards. However, for a small subset of intrinsically motivated learners, CraterClub allowed for the formation of meaningful relationships, collaborations and in depth 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, the application of technology in various learning spaces, specifically ones that deal with vulnerable children in low-resource settings with inequitable access. Experimenting with my own initiative and working at the grassroots level has given me 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, resonates 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 such an environment 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.