ABOUT ME

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I am a law graduate and human development professional, who embarked on the journey to transform outcomes for marginalized youth almost a decade ago. My experience includes developing program strategy, creating monitoring and evaluation frameworks, life skills learning experience design and facilitation, training and capacity building of adults working with children, planning, designing, and executing large-scale projects, and remote and distributed team management. 

I work at the intersection of research and practice by focusing on inquiry-driven innovation aimed developing a healthy support ecosystem for youth from high adversity backgrounds to empower them to thrive and promote upward mobility. Over the last decade, I have worked towards understanding the challenges institutionalized youth face. Going forward, I intend to to investigate the efficacy of different interventions and understand the criteria for designing new approaches to empower marginalized youth. Through my work I explore answers to the questions: What socio-emotional and other skills will young people who have faced adversity need to cope with crises and successfully navigate life and career pathways? What kind of experiences will support them in developing these skills and capacities? How can we design developmentally relevant, trauma-informed and strengths-based interventions taking into account protective and risk factors that shape the adolescent's vulnerability and coping capacity? What role can the community, especially the caregivers, play to support them? How can we strengthen community and family systems to foster an environment conducive to healthy development?

In pursuance of those answers, I intend to work on action-led projects to design and test developmentally appropriate interventions responsive to challenges faced by vulnerable children and youth, measure the efficacy of the solutions, and identify program models which can be replicated at scale. Eventually I intend to set up a social enterprise that generates actionable evidence through designing and investigating interventions to promote upward mobility for at-risk youth. I am currently pursuing my Ed.M in Human Development and Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education, where I continue to build my skills in qualitative and quantitative research methods while exploring the connection between the theory of developmental psychology, learning sciences, and practice.