Our founders Shilpa and Amit have been passionate about education as far back as they can remember. Both Shilpa and Amit have directly experienced the transformative effects of education. Their families' lives have been changed over generations, all because of good education. Shilpa is a Physicist and a Computer Scientist with ... degrees from State University of New York (Binghamton) and Cornell University. Her family's known journey starts four generation back from humble beginnings. Her great-grandfather was a sweet (dessert) vendor with little education. Education pulled her family out of hardships, and her grandfather and father both became Engineers. She worked as a software engineer for many years, before deciding to devote her time to family and philanthropy.Amit Singhal is known as the man behind Google search. Amit led Google search for over fifteen years (2000-2016). His family story is also that of education. Amit’s great grandfather, Mr. Shiv Gupta was a person of few means. He had very little education, and made his living by repairing bicycle punctures (flat tires) on a roadside in a temporary shop, which was all of four bamboo sticks and a tarp. Again, successive generations' emphasis on education resulted in Amit’s father becoming an engineer, and Amit getting a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell. After fifteen years of leading Google search, Amit, with Shilpa, decided to give back to his community through the Sitare Foundation.

Shashi is a seasoned professional with more than two decades of leadership experience. He has served our country as an officer in the Indian Navy and then joined Larsen and Toubro Ltd. Shashi has management and legal training from IIM Indore, Asian School of Cyber Laws, Symbiosis and holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering ... from Bangalore University. He is also a certified Project Management Professional - PMP from PMI.org. As an Engineer Officer with the Indian Navy, Shashi played an instrumental role in leading the technical arm including advanced ship control systems and missile vessels of Naval Ships and Submarines. After 10 years of dedicated service in the Indian Navy, Shashi joined Larsen and Toubro Ltd and served there for 10 years. As Deputy General Manager, he led the operations in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana region. Shashi Kiran is known to be a forward-looking leader with extensive experience in managing large-scale complex projects. He is also an avid reader and fitness enthusiast who has completed 8 half Marathons and 2 Olympic Triathlons.

Akshat is an engineer turned educator. Early in his engineering career, Akshat started volunteering and taught basic literacy and numeracy to children from slums, orphanages and juvenile homes. His work with underprivileged children made him realize that the current schooling system fails to meet the ... overarching goals of “education.” So one day Akshat decided to quit his engineering job to teach underprivileged children. As an educator Akshat has designed curriculum plans, implemented innovative pedagogy techniques and reform assessments. He has lead outcome-based interventions aimed to improve the learning outcomes in government schools.In his free time, he loves to trek, read, write, take pictures, listen to music, play instruments, sing, and long to be with the mountains.

Pratibha Chauhan leads our people and culture team. From growing up in different cities to working in several corporations as a Human Resources professional, Pratibha has developed extensive knowledge about the diversity of people and their ideas. Before Sitare, Pratibha was the head of Human Resources in White and Briefs. ... In her earlier endeavors, Pratibha aspired to be part of the Indian Armed Forces and was recommended to join the services by the Short Service Commission Board.

Vishal Yadav was the first Sitare team member that joined Sitare Foundation at the very begining. Vishal spent over a decade working in the education industry across pre-K and K-12 levels. We always say that Vishal has built Sitare Foundation brick-by-brick working shoulder to shoulder with Shilpa, Amit, and the entire Sitare ... team. Vishal has been instrumental in Sitare operations, starting from one city, and expanding the foundation to five cities.

Dr. Anabel Jensen has taught, nurtured and advocated for the needs of gifted/talented children for over four decades. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley where she majored in child development. Early in her profession she designed individualized programs for gifted minors. Dr. Jensen is Co-Founder and CEO of ... Synapse School in Menlo Park. Synapse is an independent elementary and middle school for gifted, talented and creative children where an advanced academic curriculum is fully integrated with interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences Anabel also serves as President and Co-Founder of Six Seconds, The Emotional Intelligence Network, where she has co-authored social/emotional assessments, which support gifted youngsters in strengthening these skills.She is also a Full Professor at Notre Dame de Namur University, plus Department Chair of the College of Education at NDNU where she teaches graduate students who are completing either a master’s degree or a teacher’s credential.

Pranav is the CEO of Educational Initiatives (EI), leading EI's work in student assessments and implementation of their adaptive learning software (Mindspark) in vernacular languages in government and affordable private schools across India. Ever since Pranav graduated with an MBA from Harvard Business School (HBS) in 2011, ... he has concentrated all his energy and time to work on one singular issue “how to bring technology to improve learning outcomes at scale for low-income children".Mindspark’s work has been featured in the Economist (twice) and was a shortlist for the Qatar Foundation’s WISE Awards and the UNESCO Global Top 10 in ICT Solutions. He has been invited by the Ministry of Human Resource Development to be part of the Joint Review Mission conducted by the World Bank. Pranav was nominated and awarded the Corporate Intrapreneur Award by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship in 2019 – the only one from India that year. Prior to EI and HBS, Pranav worked at Boston Consulting Group and GTI Capital in USA, Germany, Chile and Argentina. He studied B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology where he spent his summers interning at General Electric and Capital One..

Aakash is a Principal Engineer with Amazon. He previously worked at Google for eight years on cutting edge initiatives such as Actions on Google and Google Assistant, where he was a founding member. Aakash completed his Masters in Computer Science from Georgia Tech University in Atlanta and his undergraduate from BITS Pilani ... in India. Aakash is the founder of the Computer Science program of Sitare.org, where he crafted the curriculum, designed lectures, mentored teachers, organized guest lectures and taught several classes to our bright minds. He is very passionate about helping young deserving students, and has also been instrumental in setting up scholarships for BITS Pilani (his alma mater) students in India.