About Teach For India

Teach For India was founded in 2008. Inspired by Teach For America’s journey, we worked with McKinsey & Company to craft a blueprint around the belief that all children must attain an excellent education.

History

2009-2013: Building Momentum

2009 Mumbai and Pune sites launch.
2011 Delhi site launches, Alumni movement starts.
2012 Chennai and Hyderabad sites launch,
InspirED Conference sparks dialogue in education.
Our Students move from elementary to secondary school, and our first Students graduate.

2013-2017: Deepening Impact

2013 Broadway-inspired Maya Musical sets a new bar.
2014 Redrawing India, the first book about us, published.
2014 Ahmedabad site launches.
2015 Bengaluru site launches.
2016 InnovatEd launches to support early-stage Alumni education entrepreneurs,
Firki, our teacher education platform, launches.

2017-2022: Balancing Depth, Scale And Innovation

2017 TFIx launches to support education entrepreneurs across India who serve children in need.
2018 The Kids Education Revolution launches to reimagine education in partnership with children.
2019 Grey Sunshine, the second book about us, published,
The Greatest Show on Earth - a musical on the status of India's education staged.
2020 Community support through Covid including ration and device distributions. 
2021 Kolkata site launches,
Campaign to re-open schools,
Our Students return to schools.

Today, we are a movement of 900 Fellows teaching 33,000 children and 4,500+ Alumni who are collectively reaching 50 million children across India.

People

Teach For India is a Teach To Lead project governed by a committed Board of Trustees.

Teach To Lead Trustees

Shaheen Mistri
CEO & Founder Trustee, Teach For India
Founder, Akanksha Foundation

Board Member, The Akanksha Foundation

Advisory Board Member, Museum of Solutions

Arnavaz Aga
Director & ex-Chairperson, Thermax Limited
MP of Rajya Sabha (2012-18) 

Meher Pudumjee
Chairperson, Thermax Limited Ex-Chairperson, Pune
Zonal Council of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)

Board Member, Teach For India Chairperson, Akanksha Foundation

Nandita Dugar
Board Member, Akanksha Foundation
Board Member, The Circle
Core Founding Team Member, Teach For India

Neel Shahani
Ex-Banker, JP Morgan, Barclays
Ex-Head of Equity Sales Trading, CLSA and IIFL
Board Member, Teach To Lead

Board Member, Akanksha Foundation

Nisaba Godrej
Executive Chairperson at Godrej Consumer Products Limited

Chairperson, Teach For India 

Board Member of Godrej Agrovet, Bharti Airtel, Mahindra and Mahindra and VIP Industries

Pramath Raj Sinha
Founder & Chairman, Harappa Education
Founder Trustee, Ashoka University
Founding Dean, Indian School of Business

Ramesh Srinivasan
Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company, Inc. United States

Global Dean, Bower Forum

Member, McKinsey's Global Social Responsibility Council

Tara Singh Vachani
Executive Chairman, Antara Senior Living 
Vice-Chairperson, Max India Limited

Managing Trustee, Max India Foundation

Chairperson, Teach For India’s Delhi Regional Board 

Board Member, Teach For India's National Board

National Advisory Board

Abhishek Patil
Student, Flame University

Teach For India Student Alumnus 

Deepak Satwalekar
Ex-MD & CEO, HDFC Life Insurance Company Limited

Muskan Tanwani
Student, Ashoka University

Teach For India Student Alumnus

Prateek Kanwal
Director, Policy and Advocacy, NewGlobe

Teach For India Alumnus

Sandeep Rai

Founder, The Circle and Senior Advisor, Teach For India

Soumya Jain
Founder and CEO, iTeach Schools

Teach For India Alumnus

Wendy Kopp
CEO, Teach For All
Founder, Teach For America

Our Leadership Team

Shaheen Mistri
CEO & Founder Trustee

Aditya Mallya 
City Director, Mumbai

Aloma Rego
Director, Fellowship Selection

Alpana Mallick
Senior Director, Regions

Revathi Ramanan
Senior Director, Regions

Anuradha Rao
Senior Director, Impact & Operations

Apoorv Shah
City Director, Ahmedabad

Ashwath Bharath
Senior Director, Movement Building

Deepika Guleria
Director, Careers

Francis Vidhayathil
Chief Financial Officer

Gaurav Dutt
City Director, Kolkata

Hitesh Rawtani
Director, Technology

Keshar Mokha
City Director, Pune

Kritika Rawat
Director, Kids Education Revolution

Manasi Jain
Chief Of Staff

Mansi Joshi
City Director, Delhi

Nalika Braganza
Director, Training & Impact

Parag Jalan
Director, Government Relations

Vrinda Baheti
Director, TFIx

Ramabhadran Sundaram
Director, National Alumni Impact

Sara Khan
Director, Development

Shivani Agrawal
Director, Strategy & Impact

Shruti Parikh
Director, Human Resources

Swetha Balakrishnan
Director, Recruitment

Tanya Arora
Senior Director, People

Pawan Kumar
City Director, Bangalore

Vidya Rajaram
City Director, Chennai

Vignesh Krishnan
City Director, Hyderabad

Regional Advisory Board Delhi

Tara Singh Vachani (Chair)
Executive Chairman, Antara Senior Living 
Non – Executive Director, Max India Limited

Aakanksha Gulati
Director, ACT Grants

Amitav Virmani
Founder & CEO, The Education Alliance

Anu Prasad
Founder-Leader, India Leaders for Social Sector

James Abraham
Founder & Chairman, Mynzo Carbon

Mansi Joshi
City Director, Delhi, Teach For India

Tarun Cherukuri
Founder & CEO, Indus Action
Teach For India Fellow (2009-11)

Radhika Bharatram
Joint Vice Chairperson of The Shri Ram Schools

Regional Advisory Board Bengaluru

Arnavaz Aga (Chair)
Ex-Chairperson, Thermax Limited
Director on Board, Thermax Limited 

Aditi Premji
Advisor and Board Member, Dasra

K. Vaijayanti
Head, Resource & Research, Akshara Foundation

Pavithra K.L.
Associate Director, Dream a Dream

Shashi Nair
Director, Viridus Social Impact Solutions
Programme Director, NILE, Advaith Foundation 

Pawan Kumar
City Director, Bangalore, Teach For India

Vinita Bali
Ex-MD, Britannia

V Ravichandar
Chairman, Feedback Consulting

Regional Advisory Board Pune

Meher Pudumjee (Chair)
Chairperson, Thermax Limited.

Anshoo Gaur
Co-Founder & Group CEO, Ideas to Impacts

Joseph Cubas
Head of School, Avasara Academy

Keshar Mokha
City Director, Pune, Teach For India

Pradeep Bhargava
Ex-Managing Director, Cummins Generator Technologies India Ltd. 

Raj Gilda
Co-Founder and VP, Lend-A-Hand India

Rati Forbes
Director, Forbes Marshall Limited

Teach For India is a part of the Teach For All Network, a growing group of independent organisations working on expanding educational opportunities in their nations. The 60 countries in the network today share a common vision of an excellent education for all children.

Theory of Change

Meaningful change happens when we cultivate a collective force of leaders. Driven by the vision of an India free of poverty and filled with love, our leaders choose education as the path to get there. Over the next decade, we aspire to build a movement of 50,000 leaders. They will work collectively, with love, to transform the lives of 1 in 10 children from low-income communities in and beyond our regions.

We Build Leaders

We find committed people for our two-year Fellowship. We place them in low-income or government schools where they work relentlessly to transform the lives of their students. We support them as they find careers within and beyond the education sector.

We Nurture A Movement Of Leaders

After the Fellowship, our Fellows have lifelong access to our Alumni movement. This close-knit, supportive community learns and acts together for educational equity.

Within Education

Our Alumni work to transform schools and communities, join or start organisations to support education and work within government.

Beyond Education

Our Alumni work in careers in research, law, media, government and business and find ways to continue to advocate for educational equity.

Transformational Schools: They choose to be teachers, teacher trainers and leaders in schools or community centres.

Enablers of Transformational Schools: They support schools through curriculum, assessment reform, large-scale teacher training, and ed tech.

Policy and Governance: They work on policy and governance issues, supporting governments directly on large-scale systemic reforms in education.

Innovations

While Teach For India's Flagship programme is the two-year Teach For India Fellowship, we also run other programmes to build leadership.

If you are a Pre-service educator, a Teacher, a Teacher Coach or a School Leader:

Firki is an online teacher development portal which has courses aligned to content and pedagogy and carefully curated resources. Firki runs online learning programs for pre-service educators, teachers, school leaders and coaches in partnership with organisations and educational institutions.

If you have completed your Teach For India Fellowship and An Early-Stage Entrepreneur:

InnovatED is a platform for training and supporting entrepreneurs looking to build impactful organisations in education. It helps early-stage education entrepreneurs navigate the complexities of establishing and sustaining a new organisation, enabling them to create an impact.

If you are a Student:

The Kids Education Revolution is a platform for students and educators to reimagine education by building student voice, partnership and leadership.

If you are an Education Entrepreneur:

TFIx is an incubator for education entrepreneurs across India who aspire to launch their own contextualised versions of Teach For India's Fellowship to serve vulnerable children in their region.

If you are a Government Official:

Our Government Relations vertical looks for opportunities to place Alumni within the government to work on education projects. We offer a range of Student and teacher resources that can be used at scale to reimagine education. We thought-partner with the government on educational leadership and Student voice.