Hello! I'm Jayanti
I'm an education enthusiast - eager to provide engaging and holistic learning opportunities to all learners by reimagining the future of education. I’m passionate about Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) or the “whole” child development to prepare learners for life. I'm equally excited about enhancing learner skills and success by harnessing the power of data and technology, or investigating and disseminating effective strategies for strengthening our education systems to prepare learners for facing the unknown. I believe that teachers are at the heart of this work and are the drivers of successful education systems.
In the past ten years, my self-fueled passion drove me to lead many initiatives for children in slums, learning centers for migrants, and low-cost private schools in India. Business Operations, Consulting, and Technology, at the same time, has empowered me to use my skills interchangeably, and simultaneously see the bigger picture and intricacies of ground projects. I've worked on the development and management of initiatives, projects, products, and programs touching the spheres of education and healthcare across Europe, India, the United States, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
EXPERTISE
PROGRAM DESIGN AND MANAGEMENT
I've worked closely with stakeholders and leadership teams on program design, implementation, and management for making a positive impact on children’s cognitive and socio-emotional skills. This includes programs for teachers.
For instance, over four years as the program lead of national drives for child rights advocacy at Child Rights and You, I contributed to expanding the program reach. At ZS, I revamped our engagement with the partner organization (NeeV) from intermittent support to bi-weekly life skills and academic modules for middle and high-schoolers. At HGSE, I designed an SEL intervention and its evaluation plan, including design and measurement, to support preschoolers’ socio-emotional well-being and build positive parent-child relationships for families experiencing homelessness.
CONSULTING AND EVALUATION
I've worked with several schools and school districts to redesign their programming to meet student needs and to incorporate student voices. For one, I designed a framework to define the north star for their project-based learning curriculum and a set of enabling conditions to achieve the program goals as they built the plane as they flew it. For another, I, along with my team, proposed recommendations to enhance the quality of and access to after-school programming.
All my projects have involved a common thread of understanding best practices from the existing literature, coordinating with stakeholders and partners to understand their challenges, and performing a needs assessment before designing solutions and proposing recommendations.
RESEARCH AND POLICY ANALYSIS
I'm working as an Education Consultant with The World Bank Education Global Practice. Previously, I've worked as a consultant to the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, Zimbabwe, for a policy research proposal on examining improvement areas in the competency-based primary and secondary curriculum to achieve the desired learning outcomes. I led the secondary research on teacher professional development, and along with my team, proposed a series of recommendations grounded in evidence from the in-country research.
I'm well-versed with qualitative techniques such as interviews, focus groups, and observations to carve out user requirements, and am also comfortable distilling and communicating complex quantitative and analytical insights.
PROJECTS
While pursuing my masters at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I’ve had the opportunity to work on a number of incredible education consulting, research, and design projects that have allowed me to grow. I hope you’ll enjoy viewing my projects as much as I enjoyed working on them. Go ahead and explore, and please don’t hesitate to reach out if you’d like to learn more.
Parents and Children: Learning Together - PAC Intervention
Taking an asset-based approach, Parents and Children: Learning Together (PAC) supports preschool-age children and caregivers experiencing homelessness in increasing knowledge of child development and parenting strategies, building positive family relationships, coping with stress, and supporting children’s social and emotional well-being. PAC is a ten-session, two-generation parent-child education intervention with three main components: training for parents, a parallel play component for children, and a parent-child dyad coaching component.
PIC Your Impulses - Playful Interactions to Control your Impulses
PIC your Impulses – Playful Interactions to Control your Impulses (PIC) is a strategy designed to address one of the many key issues faced by preschool children (3-6 years old) and their primary caregivers while experiencing homelessness. It focuses on building self-regulation, impulse control in particular, and is embedded within a 10-week parent training and coaching PAC intervention for families experiencing homelessness.
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Examine Improvement Areas in Zimbabwean Syllabi
As a consultant to the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, Zimbabwe, our team examined the improvement areas in its competency-based primary and secondary syllabus to achieve the desired learning outcomes. Discussions with the Ministry led us to three research areas of curriculum and syllabi alignment; teacher professional development; and learning area suggestions based on assessment insights. The recommendation report is not yet public but our recent book chapter summarizes the reform.
Somerville Public Schools: Out-of-School Time Programs
This paper discusses the role and importance of “Out-of-school time” programs, as well as the current provision of these programs in Somerville. We review the potential gap in current OST offerings in Somerville and distill from the available literature the characteristics of quality OST programs and challenges of expanding access. We present three case studies of successful OST programs in Los Angeles, Singapore, and Grand Rapids, and identify useful takeaways from these case studies for Somerville Public Schools.
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EXPERIENCE
The World Bank
2020-Present
Consultant | Education Global Practice
Program Management, Evidence Building, and Technical Writing
Thematic Areas: Teacher Professional Development and Safe Schools
Harvard Graduate School of Education
2019-20
Ed.M. | International Education Policy
Harvard Ministerial Leadership Research Program, Zimbabwe
Graduate Research Assistant at The Ecological Approaches to Social Emotional Learning (EASEL) Laboratory
Graduate Intern at Learning Innovations Laboratory (LILA), Project Zero
History Diaries
2018-19
Outreach and Relations
Co-Lead Partnerships
ZS/NeeV Learning Center
2013-19
CSR Lead | Education Program Manager & Partnerships
Program Design and Management, Partner Engagement, Funding Proposals, and Milestone Tracking
ZS
2012-19
Business Operations Consultant
Project Management, Product Management, Client Engagement, Operations, and Data Analysis
Operational Excellence Leader
Quality Ambassador
American Society for Quality Certified Six Sigma Green Belt
Child Rights and You (CRY)
2011-15
Dakshinpuri Community | Lead Volunteer
Community Engagement, Program Implementation and Management, National Awareness Campaigns, and Qualitative Research
University of Delhi, Hindu College
2009-12
B.Sc.(Honors) | Physics
Physics Department Editorial Team Manager
SKILLS
STATA - Intermediary
Tableau - Intermediary
Excel - Advanced
PowerPoint - Advanced
Oracle SQL - Advanced
Qualtrics - Advanced
Access - Advanced
Spanish - Elementary
Agile Methodologies - Intermediary
AFFILIATIONS
“If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”
John Dewey
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