Team - The Education Alliance

Our team consists of professionals with varied experience across different industries who’ve found their calling in improving education standards in the country. They are supported by some of the most respected names in the field from our partner organisations which have a long history of supporting the cause of quality education in the developing world.

Executive Team

Kanchan Lall

Kanchan is the Director, Partnerships & Operations at TEA. She joined TEA in its initial days after an 8-year stint in research and consulting. In her previous role, Kanchan was working with a consulting firm in the area of foreign direct investment. She was advising foreign companies in consumer and retail segments – assisting them with market intelligence projects and implementing roll-out plans to establish their operations in India.

She has previously worked with Evalueserve, a business research firm, and has an MBA from the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. During her MBA at ISB, she was the Community Initiatives Coordinator for the Net Impact Club responsible for fostering student’s initiatives towards social welfare.

Astha Soni

Astha is the Manager for Delhi, dealing with schools that fall under the SDMC’s School Quality Enhancement Program. She also manages research and quality for TEA, and is responsible for monitoring the quality of education in government partnership schools.

Before joining TEA, Astha has managed a portfolio of projects in education, digital literacy and rural entrepreneurship as part of experience in a social enterprise based in Delhi. She holds a Bachelors degree in Psychology from the University of Delhi, and a Masters degree in Social Work (Livelihoods and Social Entrepreneurship) from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She was the recipient of the Linnaeus Palme Scholarship and completed a course from Lund University, Sweden in 2016. Her research experiences include studying the intersection of gender, education and employment, and a research study conducted to understand the experiences of migrant students in Swedish education institutions.

Megha Srinivasan

Megha is the Director, Strategy & State Programs for TEA. She has nearly 10 years of experience, five years of which are in the education sector. She has experience working in schools in Chennai and New Delhi as a school administrator, teacher-mentor and teacher for grades IV to X. She has also worked in the NGO Learning Links Foundation, managing CSR initiatives in education for Intel and HP. Prior to her tryst with education, Megha worked at GlaxoSmithKline, Singapore and Malaysia, for five years, in marketing and clinical research roles.

Megha has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and a Bachelors’ degree in Biomedical Science from the National University of Singapore. Megha also holds a Bachelors’ degree in Education from the Tamil Nadu Teacher Education University.

Hari Sivasubramaniapandian

Hari is the Senior Manager, Tamil Nadu at TEA. He has worked for nearly 7 years in the education sector in the Tamil Nadu region. Prior to his current role, he had the opportunity to work with international schools in Hyderabad in building a culture of innovation in their classrooms and train Educators to design and intentionally grow innovators mindsets in children.

He was a 2012 Teach For India (TFI) Fellow and his classroom was chosen as a finalist for the national Transformational Impact Journey process for having exceptional student outcomes. Post the fellowship, he worked as a teacher trainer across the north Chennai corporation schools and later went on to head strategy and fundraising for TFI Chennai region. His vision is to work towards the ‘one day’ where every child in India attains an excellent education.

Manikandan S.

Manikandan is the Manager, Tamil Nadu at TEA. He has 3 years of total work experience, one year of which as a Consultant at Catalyst Management Services (CMS), Bangalore. There he was managing impact evaluation projects of themes such as maternal health, child protection and others. Also, he supported the organization in setting up a knowledge management system. Prior to his switch to development sector, he was working as a Systems Engineer at Infosys for 2 years.

Manikandan has done a one-year post graduate programme in Development leadership at Indian School of Development Management (ISDM), Noida. Also, he holds a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Anna University, Chennai.

Oorna Mukherjee

Oorna Mukherjee is the Senior Associate for The Education Alliance. Prior to this, she was with an inclusive IB Continuum school in Ghana where she handled communications and spearheaded a case-study research project on “The Paradigm Shift towards Inclusive Education.” Her internship and work experiences have been spanned across India, Ghana as well as Rwanda where she grew up.

Oorna has a Masters Degree in Development Studies from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai) and a Bachelors Degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from SRM University. Her interests are in research & communication for development, children’s rights and education.

Board of Directors

Ashish Dhawan
Founder and CEO, Central Square Foundation

Ashish Dhawan is the Founder and CEO of Central Square Foundation (CSF), a philanthropic organization focused on systemic reform in K-12 education in India. Ashish is also Board Member of Ashoka University.

Ashish is an MBA with distinction from Harvard University and a dual bachelor’s (BS/BA) holder with Magna Cum Laude honors from Yale University. He is on the India Advisory Board of Harvard and a member of Yale’s Development Council. Ashish worked for twenty years in the investment management business and ran one of India’s leading private equity funds, ChrysCapital. In June 2012, he left his full time role at ChrysCapital to work on education reform in India.

Ashish serves on the board of several non-profits including Akanksha Foundation, 3.2.1 Education Foundation, Teach For India, Centre for Civil Society, Janaagraha and GiveLife. He was recently recognized as the NextGen Leader in Philanthropy by Forbes India.

Amitav Virmani
CEO, The Education Alliance

Amitav was Country Director, ARK India, a UK based NGO. As their CD, Amitav was responsible for launching several programmes around school leadership, English Literacy, School Vouchers and School Quality Assessments.

Amitav worked for Bristol Myers Squibb based in Princeton for 5 years. He has been involved with his family run business since 1994.

Amitav was educated at the Doon School and went on to study Economics at St. Stephens College, Delhi University. He has an MBA from UNC Chapel Hill, USA. He sits on the board of Central Square Foundation and several other non/for-profit organisations in India.

In 2010, he became an Aspen Fellow and in 2015 he came an Ashoka fellow.

Shweta Anand Arora

Shweta is currently a Consultant with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

Prior to this, Shweta was a part of The Education Alliance and led strategy and communications. She was an integral part of The Education Alliance management in its founding years and was involved in setting up its first pilot project in South Delhi.

Shweta has previously led the XSEED Content Development and Assessment team at iDiscoveri. XSEED is an integrated curriculum and professional development program to improve the quality of teaching and learning in schools and has been featured in the MIT Innovations Journal.

Shweta started her career at The Boston Consulting Group as a Senior Associate, where she worked on strategy, cost optimisation, and post-merger integration and sourcing projects. She then switched sectors to pursue her passion to improve education in India. Shweta is a gold medallist in Psychology from Delhi University. She did her MBA from IIM-Ahmedabad and a Masters in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.