Suggestions
Venil Ali
Chief of Schools and Alumni at Akanksha Foundation I Podcaster I TFI Alum I TEDx Speaker
Venil Ali is a passionate development sector professional with a background in Education and Employability.
With extensive experience in leading large programs, strategic planning, people development, culture design, and training, Venil is committed to social justice, equity, and human rights.
Educationally, Venil attended Bombay Scottish School in Mumbai and pursued a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) at Government Law College in Mumbai.
Venil also holds a Certificate in Strategic Non-Profit Management from Harvard Business School Executive Education, a Bachelor's Degree in Life Science & Biochemistry from St. Xavier's College, and a Master's Degree in Biochemistry from Lokmanya Tilak Municipal Medical College.
Professionally, Venil Ali has served as the Senior Director of Program Operations & Scale at Antarang Foundation.
In the past, Venil was the Creator & Host of A New Kind of Celebrity Podcast, a Contributing Writer at Human Rights Pulse, Head of Tutor Operations at LIDO, City Director in Mumbai at Teach For India, Senior Program Manager at Teach For India, Program Manager at Teach For India, Fellow at Teach For India, and Founder of LEAP - Let's Educate All People.
Highlights
There's something about events that builds deep and strong working relationships. I've been thinking about what makes them such a strong medium for this and sharing some of my reflections below.
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#Corecommittees - In cases where there are no/few full time members, there's a need of a group of people to come together to do this in addition to their work. a) Multiple skillsets, all equally important - administration, planning, outreach, programming, design, crowd management and more are needed for a successful event. It makes each person's contribution equal irrespective of hierarchy, years of experience etc. b) Shared experience - Members come closer because they most understand and empathise with the additional time, effort and work being put in.
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#10xspeed - Typically strong working relationships take a few weeks or months to form, however at events.. a) Extended hours - In the context of an event, the teams are spending extended hours, often 16-20 on event days. b) Whole self - Spending so much time together invariably leads to exhaustion, humour, re-enegising breaks and conversations through which build strong connections. c) Immediate feedback and action - There is no time at an event to wait for the right moment to give feedback. Feedback and problem solving is immediate making folks engage in difficult conversations, debates and discussion in the interest of the larger outcome.
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Doing #whatever it takes a) Stepping up - In an event, everyone is quick to step up and support wherever needed, irrespective of whether it was part of their role or not. b) Damage control - Something has to go wrong, something didn't arrive or was designed incorrectly, limited support for logistics etc etc, people step up and instead of complaining and fault finding, just get the work done, no matter how tedious. Debrief and learning can happen later.
Five organisations (The Circle India iTeach Schools, The Akanksha Foundation, Teach For India, Teach For All) came together to organise the Schools of Tomorrow Summit which brought together ~400+ educators concluded last week. Thank you to all the lovely folks in this picture for a crazy, hectic and fun experience.
What's been your experience with events?
I'm very excited for the launch of a special project today, the Aspiring Teacher Program, for a couple of reasons.
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#Idea to reality - It's always fun to see an idea take life. This was one of the first ideas Saurabh Taneja got me to work on last year. It all came together today with 27 people in the cohort and a fabulous manager Shreya Ghosh leading it all.
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#StudentAlumni - 52% of the cohort are alumni of The Akanksha Foundation, Teach For India student alumni, iTeach Schools and Avasara Academy. It's always incredible working with this group of young adults.
This is a program for people aspiring to be career teachers as well as those keen to continue teaching at Akanksha and similar schools. We have a lot to learn and a lot to test throughout the year! Look forward to connect with folks running similar programs to exchange notes.
#inspiration

