Founders: Shilpa and Amit Singhal
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.
Akshat Tewari: Director of Academics
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.
Col Sarjeet Yadav (retd): Director of Operations
Sarjeet comes from a humble farmer turned educationist family. His father, his inspiration, moved to Delhi to become an educationist and provide a good quality education to their children. Sarjeet has witnessed first hand how education is empowering for the entire family.
Sarjeet retired from the Indian Army after twenty two years of distinguished service to the nation. He served in the most difficult environments in Kashmir (including Siachen). Col. Yadav also led India’s Counter Insurgency Operation in both Kashmir and in the north-eastern states. He experienced the Arab Spring first hand while serving in Egypt. In addition he was the Senior Trainer in Army War College and Army Air Defence College.
Advisers
We at Sitare Foundation are incredibly fortunate to have these amazing people to guide us in our journey.
Anabel Jensen
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 Kothari
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”.
Vikram Ahuja
Vikram started building Sitare with Shilpa and Amit right at the founding of the foundation in 2016. Vikram is a lifelong educator. His passion for education shows in his sixteen years of leading Eurokids and EuroSchools institutions in the state of Rajasthan, India. Vikram is an education innovator at heart, from teacher training to out-of-classroom programs, he has built several innovative programs that have deeply impacted the quality of education in his schools. Vikram has tremendous knowledge of the school systems in India. Vikram cares a lot about impacting the lives of numerous capable children through education