On the occasion of International Women’s Day, Brainfeed took the opportunity to recognize the efforts of twenty exceptional women leaders in the field of education. We featured them in our cover story “Women Edupreneurs” of March 2023 edition of the Brainfeed Magazine. These women leaders focused and strived for creating a positive ecosystem at their workplace that helped other women in contributing to their fullest and ushering in the much needed change. Each one of these women educational entrepreneurs shared what it took them to successfully complete their entrepreneurial journey during which they have explored and found new identities for themselves and other women working with them.
I was pursuing my PhD in Education Technology when I got involved in school administration. Back then, technology in education was bare minimum hence, I began designing a technological intervention in our own school. After introducing certain technological changes we received positive response from the local parent community. They loved and appreciated the changes I had brought in. Families who couldn’t afford to invest much in education also appreciated the endeavour. I thought this was a cause I can devote my life to and so I moved back to India in 2011.
As an educational institute we brought a lot of changes in the method and medium of teaching. We were the first school to build digital classrooms for students. Several practices that were earlier not followed like lesson planning, having assistant teachers or having afterschool classes were initiated by us. These practices were later adopted by others as well. We are proud to have been able to bring about such transformation in education.
We have an ecosystem where our students get the exposure to meet and interact with various innovators. This helps them learn a lot, build their own ideas and harbour their own sense of the world. Students get to talk about their own perception which they try to turn into reality. In this way we’ve tried to boost the thinking capabilities of our students and truly know how they are the future innovators and dreamers.
A happy workforce indicates a good workplace culture. If you treat your team as an equal, if you make sure they are as happy as you, you know you are running your institute well. If your teachers are happy, your students will be equally happy. We have been able to retain our staff for a decade now. That is definitely an achievement for us.
Women are compassionate. Their caring nature makes them innate care providers. We need more such compassionate women in our field. The first outside encounter or bond that a child forms is with his/her teacher. This bond needs a lot of nurturing which women can provide.
As edupreneurs, we can only create innovators and dreamers by giving students the environment to think and communicate freely. With a large global network, our students get to participate in an exchange of ideas.
