Shaheen Mistri
Chief Executive Officer

Shaheen Mistri is the founder of the Akanksha Foundation, a non-profit organization with a mission to impact the lives of less privileged children, enabling them to maximise their potential and change their lives. Akanksha works primarily in the field of education, addressing non formal education through the Akanksha centre model and also formal education by initiating school reform. Over the past 19 years, the organization has expanded from 15 children in one centre to over 3,500 children across Mumbai and Pune. Mistri is an Ashoka Fellow (2001), a Global Leader for Tomorrow at the World Economic Forum (2002), an Asia Society 21 Leader (2006) and serves on the boards of Ummeed, The Thermax Social Initiatives Foundation and is an advisor to the Latika Roy Foundation. Mistri has been working on the idea of Teach For India from 2007, and serves as its founding CEO and one of its founding Board Members.

Ruchi Mathur
Chief Operating Officer

Ruchi is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (1995). She has worked in both the corporate and the development sector and has experience in non-profit organization management, marketing, retailing and advertising. She started her career at Lowe Worldwide and went on to head marketing at Times Retail (Planet M). In 2005, she decided to switch over to the development sector and joined CRY as General Manager - Resource Generation(South). She was responsible for fundraising, profitability, strategy and team building for the Resource Generation function and as part of the second line leadership at CRY, held joint responsibility for the South Region.

Dimple Gujral
Chief Finance Officer

Dimple has come to Teach For India with a wealth of Finance experience in large organisations. Her last assignment was with Cleartrip.com one of leading online travel portals in India - where she was the Associate Vice President for Finance. Prior to that, she has worked with Kuoni Travel (India) Pvt. Ltd. where she achieved savings of nearly INR 10 million due to proper planning, forward covers and negotiations with banks. A qualified CA, she completed her graduation in commerce from Narsee Monjee College and also has completed a Diploma course in Import-Export Management.

Garima Kapila
City Director, Mumbai

Garima came to Teach for India from the India practice of McKinsey & Co, where she worked as a management consultant for 3 years. At McKinsey, she served clients on a range of issues (organization, strategy, operations) spanning multiple sectors (IT services, government, metals, chemicals, social / developmental). She specialized in the Social sector, spending over 2 years in the areas of primary education, microfinance, healthcare, ICT and government reform. Garima received a B.Tech degree in Computer Science & Engineering in 2005 from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi.

Chaitali Sheth
City Director, Pune

Chaitali brings to Teach For India a wealth of development sector experience in India and internationally. She worked for several years with the Akanksha Foundation in various capacities and virtually grew with the organization from Education Coordinator to General Manager, Pune. She completed her Masters in Management of Training and Development from the University of Edinburgh in 2006 and went on to work with the Edinburgh Voluntary Organisations' Council as a Development Worker in her last assignment.

Gayatri Nair Lobo
Director Development and Alumni Support

Gayatri has joined Teach For India after 6 years of working in strategy consulting. Before joining, Teach For India, she was an Engagement Manager at OC&C Strategy Consultants, Mumbai. At OC&C, she worked with several large clients in various sectors like FMCG, Media and Retail. Prior to OC&C, Gayatri worked with Avalon Consulting and HDFC Bank. She has a Bachelor in Commerce with a Masters in Management Studies from Mumbai University.

Sheela Prasad
Manager, Selection and Impact

Sheela Prasad came to Teach For India from Teach For America, where she worked with a team to develop the Teaching As Leadership rubric and its supplementary website, the Teaching As Leadership Online Navigator. Before joining Teach For America, Prasad worked in India through the service fellowship, Indicorps. Through that fellowship, she developed life skills curricula at Sai Kripa in Uttar Pradesh and Eklavya in Madhya Pradesh. Prasad is a 2004 graduate of Brown University, where she received a Bachelor's degree in Math and History.

Kavita Rajagopalan
Manager, Training (Pune)

Before joining Teach For India, Kavita Rajagopalan has worked with The Princeton Review, Chennai. At the Princeton Review she acted as academic coordinator and liaison between the head and local offices; taught GRE, SAT and GMAT courses and was responsible for organizing and conducting regional seminars. Previously, she has also interned at VERTIC, a London-based NGO that undertook research into the monitoring and verification of international agreements. Rajagopalan received a Masters degree in 2008 from Harvard University's Graduate School of Education where she studied International Education Policy. She received a Bachelor's degree (with honors) in International Studies in 2005 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Sandeep Rai
Manager, Training (Mumbai)

Before coming to Teach For India, Sandeep worked with Our Task in Washington DC, where he developed training and outreach efforts. Sandeep is a Teach For America corps member who completed the program in 2008. He taught 7th and 8th grade Science in Sousa Middle School where he achieved significant gains (approx. 1.5 years of skill growth in one year) with his students. He also served as 7th grade team leader and developed several school-wide initiatives including a school culture plan. He was the recipient of the Best Teacher award (DCPS / Sousa) for the 2007-'08 school year. Sandeep has a Masters degree in Teaching & Education from American University.

Nidhi Variava
Manager, Human Resources

Nidhi has worked with the world's largest management consulting firm specializing in people issues Hewitt Associates for almost 8 years prior to joining Teach For India. An alumnus of the prestigious Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, she has worked in the sphere of compensation benchmarking and design, HR strategy, competency assessments etc. While in college, she was an active member of AIESEC and held an Executive Body position as Vice President of Student Exchange Programmes.

Shveta Raina
Manager, Recruitment

Shveta was a management consultant with McKinsey and Company prior to joining Teach For India. She graduated from Brown University in 2007 where she concentrated in Applied Mathematics, International Relations and Economics.  While at McKinsey, Shveta founded the Female Business Analyst Mentorship Program, and at Brown, she led the International Mentoring Program. Previously, she has interned at Goldman Sachs (NY), Merrill Lynch (Mumbai) and Euro RSCG Corporate Communications (Paris) and has received several academic and public-speaking achievement awards.