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.
2024 TFI turns 15.

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

Nisaba Godrej
Executive Chairperson, Godrej Consumer Products (GCPL)

Arnavaz (Anu) Agha
Former Chairperson, Thermax Limited
Nominated Member of Rajya Sabha (2012-18)

Meher Pudumjee
Chairperson, Thermax Limited

Nandita Dugar
Board Member, Akanksha Foundation
Former Interim-CEO of Akanksha Foundation
Formerly, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Unilever, and HDFC Bank

Neel Shahani
Board Member, Akanksha Foundation
Former Banker, J.P.Morgan and Barclays
Ex-Lead Sales Trading at CLSA and IIFL

Pramath Raj Sinha
Founder and MD, Harappa Education
Founding Dean & Executive Board, ISB
Founder & Trustee, Ashoka University (Young India Fellowship)
Founder, 9.9 Group
Former CEO, Ananda Bazar Patrika Group
Former Partner at McKinsey & Company

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

Shaheen Mistri
CEO, Teach For India
Founder and Board Member, The Akanksha Foundation
Advisory Board Member, Museum of Solutions and The Circle

Tara Singh Vachani
Executive Chairperson, Antara Senior Care
Vice-Chairperson, Max India Limited
Managing Trustee, Max India Foundation
Governing Council Member, The Vedica Scholars Program for Women
Mentor for KARM Fellowship

National Advisory Board

Deepak Satwalekar
Former Managing Director, HDFC Ltd
Former Managing Director and CEO, HDFC Standard Life Insurance Co. Ltd
Consultant, World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (HABITAT).
Advisory Council, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay
Chairman, Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Management, Indore,
Chaired/Member of several industries, Governments and Reserve Bank of India expert groups

Prateek Kanwal
Director, Deloitte
Co-Founder, Kautilya School of Public Policy
Teach For India Alumnus

Sandeep Rai
Founder, The Circle
Corps Member, ****Teach For America
Board Member, iTeach Schools, Saturday Art Class
Author, ‘Grey Sunshine, Stories from Teach For India’

Sairam Sagaram
Teach For India Student Alum

Soumya Jain
Founder and CEO, iTeach Schools
Teach For India Alumnus

Supriya Kumar
Teach For India Student Alum

Wendy Kopp
Co-Founder & CEO, Teach For All

Our Leadership Team

Shaheen Mistri
CEO

Aarushi Sharma
City Director, Delhi

Alpana Mallick
Senior Director, Regions

Ankit Agrawal
City Director, Hyderabad

Anna Maria
Director, Strategy & Impact

Anuradha Rao
Senior Director, Impact & Operations

Ashwath Bharath
Senior Director, Movement Building

Caroline Paul
City Director, Mumbai

Deepika Guleria
Director, Careers

Elizabeth Samuel
Director, Firki

Francis Vidhayathil
CFO

Gaurav Dutt
City Director, Kolkata

Hitesh Rawtani
Director, Technology

Kritika Rawat
Director, Kids Education Revolution

Nalika Braganza
Program Director

Prabhakaran Karunamoorthi
City Director, Chennai

Rahat Lokhandwala
City Director, Bengaluru

Ramabhadran Sundaram
Director, National Alumni Impact

Revathi Ramanan
Senior Director, Regions

Sara Khan
Director, Development

Shreyas Vatsa
Director, Selection

Shruti Parikh
Director, Human Resources

Sitara Menon
Director, Brand & Communications

Sumay Gupta
City Director, Pune

Swetha Balakrishnan
Director, Fellowship Recruitment

Tanya Arora
Senior Director, People

Vrinda Baheti
Director, TFIx

Regional Advisory Board Bengaluru

Anand Dutta
Partner, Nexus Venture Partners

Arati Menon Gupta
Government Advocacy, Solving sensitive CSA/CPP cases, expanding PPP

E‍ric Savage
Co-Founder & CEO, Unitus Capital

‍K Vaijayanti Kurukundi
Head Resource & Evaluation, Akshara Foundation

Pranab Barua
CEO, Madura Garments
Board Member, Nykaa and Aditya Birla

Pavithra K.L.
Associate Director, Dream a Dream

Regional Advisory Board Chennai

Rajiv Lochan
Managing Director & CEO at Sundaram Finance Limited

Vijay Srinivasan
Managing Director, MDMM Consultants

Vedika Agarwal
Founder, Yein Udaan

Rinku Mecheri
Founder, Chennai Volunteers

PR Ganapathy
Mentor to Entrepreneurs

Chitra Ravi
Founder & CEO, Chrysalis

Regional Advisory Board Delhi

Amitav Virmani(Chair)
Founder & CEO, The Education Alliance

Aakanksha Gulati
Director, ACT Grants

Aditya Ghosh
Founder, Homage
CoFounder, AkasaAir
Board Member, Fabindia, OYO, Greencell Mobility
Chairperson, Social Enterprises at SEWA
Former President, IndiGo

James Abraham
Founder & Chairman, Mynzo Carbon

Mansi Joshi
Global Lead, Learning Experiences, Teach For All

Radhika Bharat Ram
Joint Vice Chairperson, The Shri Ram Schools
Founder, KARM Fellowship for Young Indian Women

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

Regional Advisory Board Kolkata

Shivika Goenka
Founder, RP-Goenka International School

Prasenjit
Group COO, Hi Care Remedy

Neerza Jhunjhunwala
Special Educator

Priya Dugar
Consultant, The Circle India
2014 TFI Fellow

Regional Advisory Board Pune

Meher Pudumjee (Chair)
Chairperson, Thermax Limited.

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

Joseph Cubas
Co-Founder and Head of School, Avasara Academy

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

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

Rati Forbes
Director, Forbes Marshall Limited

Robin Kumar
Director, iTeach Schools

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.