Venil Ali

Venil Ali has been working in the Development sector informally since 2004. She started her journey through the Social Involvement Program (SIP) at St. Xaviers College, Mumbai, while pursuing her Bachelors in Life Sciences and Biochemistry. She volunteered at an after school program with V - Care Foundation for three years. While pursuing her Masters in Biochemistry from Sion Hospital, Mumbai, she started her own after school center called LEAP (Let's Educate All People), catering to ~60 students at Matunga Labour Camp, Mumbai. It ran for two years and was featured in newspapers like Mumbai Mirror and DNA. In 2009, Venil joined the first cohort of the Teach For India Fellowship. She taught for two years in low-income private schools and municipal schools in Govandi and Worli. Post her Fellowship, she joined Teach For India as a staff member. She worked as a Program Manager, Senior Program Manager, and then was the City Director of Mumbai for six years. As City Director, she would oversee different verticals like Fellow support and development, student learning and outcomes, fundraising, alumni engagement, government and school relations, HR, and admin. After completing ten years with Teach For India, she worked at an Ed-Tech start-up for a year. She built out all Tutor processes for them, including contracts, compensation, recruitment, selection, training and development, payroll, and engagement. She scaled up the team from 12 to 490 Tutors within ten months. She is currently working at Antarang Foundation, which focuses on youth employability, as Senior Director - Programs & Scale. She has completed a certificate program on Strategic Nonprofit Management from Harvard Business School. She is also a Changemaker as part of the fourth cohort of She Creates Change at Change.org. She is a volunteer writer for Human Rights Pulse and is on the advisory board of an education consulting organization Ikegai Education Labs.