Aastha Ahuja | Associate Director - Programs

Aastha is the Associate Director – Programs at The Education Alliance.

She brings a decade of experience working at the intersection of education and livelihoods, spanning roles in direct implementation, research and evidence generation, and strategy and policy. Her expertise lies in strategic program management, with a strong focus on government–civil society partnerships.

She has worked with multiple pilots to scale, honing a sharp ability to identify high-leverage interventions rooted in the Pareto principle—those that address core issues with durable, cross-generational impact. She is especially drawn to models that are context-responsive and built for long-term systems change.

Aastha began her journey as an engineer by training, before pivoting to the social sector through the Young India Fellowship in Liberal Arts. She deepened her academic grounding with a master’s degree in Adult Education for Social Change as an Erasmus Mundus Scholar. During her master’s, she maintained a critical focus on teacher education in India, exploring both its policy landscape and practical implementation.

She joins TEA inspired by its commitment to “deep scaling” and its bold, adaptive approach to public–private partnerships in education. For her, TEA’s work is a reflection of what matters most in reform—building ecosystems that last beyond individual projects or structures.