Dr. Ruchi Mehta is the Board Chair of Teach For India U.S. She also serves on the Executive board of the University of Maryland College Park Foundation, and is the Trustee Chair of the Budget, Audit and Investment committee. Ruchi is a former Managing Director and Partner of Lone Pine Capital where she led healthcare investments. She obtained her undergraduate from St. Stephen's College, University of Delhi, her Masters from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and her Doctorate in Molecular Biology from the University of Maryland, College Park. Ruchi has been actively involved at her children’s school, assuming various leadership roles in the Parents Association, the Council and the Annual Fund.
Amar serves as Executive Director of Teach For America Indianapolis. In this role he sets organizational vision and direction, cultivates resources, influences education policy, and supports the impact of the TFA network on Indiana students in pursuit of educational excellence and equity for all kids. He began his career in education as a Teach For America corps member where he taught high school chemistry, biology, and coached baseball at Wells Academy High School in Chicago. He is a former member of the TFA Chicago-Northwest Indiana team, including as Head of Development. Amar is a graduate of Vanderbilt University with a degree in biomedical engineering. Raised in Terre Haute, Indiana, the son of Indian immigrants and first-generation American K-12 public schools graduate, he recognizes the transformative and multi-generational impact education can offer. Amar has a purpose to see to it that every child, regardless of background, has access to an excellent education – one that enables them to fulfill their potential and shape a better world for themselves and all of us.
Ajay Gupta is Senior Partner Emeritus at McKinsey & Company. He brings 30 years of global experience and judgment across multiple healthcare segments having led McKinsey Midwest Healthcare and Medical Products. He served a wide variety of clients on topics of strategy, M&A, commercial excellence, organization design and performance improvement. Ajay serves on the boards of Healthium Medtech, BJC Healthcare, Vizient Inc, OnPoint Surgical, VIC Technology Ventures, RAND Health Advisory, Innovaccer Advisory Council, and is an advisor to several healthcare companies. Previously Ajay spent 5 years at Schlumberger Wireline in Asia and Europe. He earned an MBA from Stanford University where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar, and a B.Tech from IIT Delhi where he was awarded the President’s Gold Medal.
Alka Thukral graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the University of Texas at Arlington. She worked in the architectural field for several years, followed by a shift in careers into the technology space for proprietary banking software at UBS. Alka is also an active board member for Streets International, a culinary and hospitality based education organization for disadvantaged and vulnerable youth living in poverty in Vietnam. For the last 10 years, Alka has been active in her children’s school. She lives in Greenwich, CT and is married to Nikhil and has three children - Yana, Renna and Soren.
Aneesh is currently the Chief Executive Officer at One Million Degrees (OMD), an organization that accelerates community college students’ progress on career pathways to economic mobility. Aneesh is the child of immigrants and was compelled to begin his career in education because of the meaningful role access to educational opportunity played in his family’s life. He started as a high school English teacher. It was his experience working with his students that brought to life for Aneesh the limitless potential of students and the need to ensure all students had access to opportunities to meet their potential. Since leaving the classroom, Aneesh worked in the public and non-profit sector supporting education reform efforts at a city and state level. This includes his time at the Tennessee Department of Education where he played a major role in the design and implementation of the states’ transformative teacher evaluation system, and at TNTP (formerly The New Teacher Project), where he supported human capital and academic reform efforts in Camden, NJ and Boston, MA. Most recently, Aneesh served as the Executive Director for Teach For America in Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana for nearly six years. Aneesh was previously named to Forbes 30 under 30 for education, is a 2019 Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow and a member of The Economic Club of Chicago.
Charag is the Teach for India U.S. Alumni Council Chair, and member of the founding cohort of Teach for India in 2009. Teaching 51 kids in Grades 2 and 3 at a municipal school in Pune, India taught him invaluable life lessons over his two years at TFI. Currently a Partner at McKinsey & Company, Charag collaborates with a range of universities on topics of financial sustainability, operations, M&A and analytics. He led his team to set up Generation India, a non-profit founded by McKinsey, focused on supporting youth employment, and has also served as a UNICEF Innovation Fellow. Charag received his MBA from Kellogg Business School and a Bachelor of Technology from National Institute of Technology, Bhopal. He is a recipient of the prestigious Young Impact, Tata, Mahindra and National Talent Search scholarships.
Mallika is passionate about education and has been funding and advising education organizations for the last 10 years. She currently works with Compro, an education technology company that builds online courseware for higher-educational institutes, corporates and education publishers. Before joining Compro, Mallika worked at Omidyar Network, an impact investment firm, where she led the education portfolio in India. Prior to Omidyar Network, Mallika worked in the US as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, Broadview and, most recently, with Citigroup. She has been on a number of education company and non-profit Boards previously, including Aspiring Minds, EnglishHelper, and Dasra. Mallika is also a Board Advisor to 3.2.1 Education Foundation, a non-profit organization that was founded by a Teach for India alumni. Mallika has a BA in Economics and Mathematics from Smith College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Vikas Keswani is the Finance Chair of the Teach For India U.S. board. Vikas is also a Managing Director and member of various illiquid Investment Committees at HPS Investment Partners, a leading global investment firm with more than $60 billion of assets under management. Prior to joining HPS in 2010, he spent a majority of his career at BlackRock, where he was a part of the initial team that established, structured and capitalized BlackRock Capital Investment Corporation (NASDAQ: BKCC), a publicly traded private investment vehicle. Vikas is a CFA charterholder and holds a Bachelor of Science degree from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude. He feels passionately about expanding the educational opportunity set for those less fortunate.
Shaheen grew up in 5 countries around the world, and returned to India when she was 18 to start Akanksha. For 17 years, she worked with teachers and students, building Akanksha to provide children from low-income communities the kind of education that would maximize their greatest potential. Today, Akanksha serves 9300 children through their School Project and after-school centres in Mumbai and Pune. In 2008, Shaheen founded Teach For India, with an audacious vision of providing an excellent education to all children across India through building a pipeline of leaders committed to ending educational inequity in India. Today, Teach For India directly impacts approximately 28,000 children across seven regions in India. Shaheen has also created projects like the Kid's Education Revolution, which explores student leadership and platforms for student voice and partnership, and TFIx, which is a year-long incubator program for passionate entrepreneurs who are willing to adapt Teach For India’s model to their context in rural areas. Shaheen currently serves on the boards of Akanksha Foundation. Shaheen has been an Ashoka Fellow, a Global Leader for Tomorrow at the World Economic Forum, and an Asia Society 21 Leader. She is the author of the book, Redrawing India and the Miss Muglee Children’s Books. She has a Bachelor’s Degree from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, and a Master’s Degree from the University of Manchester.
Ramesh Srinivasan is an invited guest to the Teach For India U.S. Board, and a Board Member of Teach For India. He is also a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, and an established leader in Pharmaceutical and Organization practices. He is a Dean of the Bower Forum, McKinsey's program for CEO learning. Ramesh has extensive experience working on a broad range of strategy and organizational topics across healthcare, private equity, high-tech, banking and industrial sectors. His illustrious portfolio has seen him serve various companies on topics related to operations, marketing and research and development. These projects include merger management, organization design, leadership development, and transformational change.
Dimple Bangalore is the Executive Director of Teach For India U.S. (TFI US) since October 2022. Dimple has the long-term vision to build strong and long-lasting organizational systems and partnerships, and empower Teach For India (TFI) with resources to create systemic educational transformation through collective leadership. Growing up in a single-parent home and studying at an under-resourced school in India, cemented Dimple's passion for educational equity early on. Dimple believes that every child, regardless of their background, deserves an excellent education that will transform their lives. Dimple began her career in the founding admissions and outreach team at Ashoka University, India. She has an M.A. in Organizational Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University, and has worked in the New York City Department of Education, United Nations Global Compact, and a charter school. Dimple joins TFI US after four years in Teach For America (TFA) Ohio, including two years as the Head of Development. She believes that a strong strategic direction, excellent relationship management with stakeholders, and thorough internal planning were the keys to success for her TFA team, and is eager to lead TFI US from startup to growth phase.