Clone of Our People

Peter works as a consultant in international education and health. Peter worked previously for the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation and for DFID, where he was latterly Head of the Human Development Department in DFID’s Policy Division. Peter has worked as an education specialist in Africa, Asia and the Balkans. 

Philippa leads on the internal operations at GSF. Her primary focus is on people and culture and creating the best possible environment for the team to thrive, the organisation to run smoothly and our resources to be applied effectively to create the impact we want to make in the world. Philippa is passionate about learning and is excited to support GSF through a phase of growth and change and ensuring a fun, engaging, efficient and effective workplace for the whole team to learn and grow together, while supporting the GSF community to do the same.   

Aashti leads the team at GSF, and is responsible for the organisation’s strategy, growth, delivery and impact. Aashti is inspired by the idea of creating, growing and sustaining a vibrant platform for people to support and learn from each other, to partner and collaborate, and to work together to solve some of our challenges in global education.

Stephen brings over a decade of experience in communications, marketing and advertising, working in both agency and client-side creative communications roles. Stephen joined Guardian News & Media in 2013 as part of the launch team for their award-winning branded content agency, Guardian Labs. He then moved to ESI Media’s Story Studio, their in-house creative department working across The Independent and Evening Standard.

Mercy promotes community member growth and engagement. This includes identifying potential community members in the non-state education sector, supporting in the application and on boarding process as a first point of contact; and member mapping the GSF community to reflect the geographic spread, areas of work and expertise, their needs and priorities to better align the GSF programmes with the community's requirements. 

Poornima has close to 10 years of experience working with entrepreneurs, governments, and other ecosystem partners in education. At GSF, her work includes leading on the second cohort of the Impact at Scale Labs focused on childcare and ECED organizations in East Africa, as well as scoping out and building opportunities for innovative financing in education. Prior to GSF, she has worked as a management consultant advising public and private ecosystem players in education and skills on programme design, market strategy, policy design and evaluation, and impact assessments.

Habeeb previously worked as Programme Manager for Wennovation Hub, where he led the design and implementation of incubation, acceleration and entrepreneurship programmes. His role also involved helping businesses prepare for investment, including pitches for investors. Before this, Habeeb was the Growth Manager for ed-tech start-up Studylab360.

Alina leads on supporting education entrepreneurs to scale education innovations that improve learning for underserved children. She is passionate about achieving better outcomes in education through evidence-based collaborations between innovators, funders, and governments. Prior to GSF, Alina was part of the co-founding team at the Education Outcomes Fund leading a pioneering results-based financing partnership with the government of Sierra Leone. She has experience consulting on education evidence and policy, and working as an Adviser to the Deputy Prime Minister in Moldova.

Steph manages the engagement with our members to nurture a collaborative and dynamic community, working with inspirational actors in non-state education who are making positive, sustainable changes. Steph is looking forward to getting to know the community better and amplifying their work. 

Santiago has worked as a consultant and research associate for UNESCO, UNDP, World Bank, UNICEF-Office of Research Innocenti and the Global Partnership for Education in projects related to industrial policy, safety strategies, cash transfers, access to water and sanitation, as well as education and social protection programmes. 

Candice serves as the team administrator, bringing efficiency and organisation to global operations. She enjoys connecting with colleagues worldwide and supporting them in their important work. With experience growing up in a developing country, she believes passionately in improving education. Her systems and support allow the team to work seamlessly across borders to achieve the greatest impact. 

Ajay previously worked with The Citizens Foundation as a Senior Manager Organisation Culture and Mother Tongue based Multilingual Education. Ajay led the research and design team studying and implementing benefits of using familiar language as a medium of instruction throughout students’ educational journey. Prior to that he founded an educational consultancy ‘Ek Nuqta’ and was associated with Aga Khan University Examination Board.

Kavita leads on growing and strengthening the GSF community. She brings over a decade of experience in education in India working with both government and low-cost private schools. She has experience designing and implementing large-scale training programs for teachers and school leaders and supporting state governments with their education intervention.

Kiran has designed and is delivering the first Impact at Scale Labs that supports 3 organisations scale their innovations for post-covid learning recovery. Kiran is deeply passionate about understanding how to effectively scale impactful innovations. Kiran’s favourite project is the scale readiness framework project, as she sees this as an important step to supporting the education community understand scale in the education context much better.

Priyanka has over 7 years of experience in the education sector in India. She was a Fellow with Teach For India for 2 years, teaching a primary classroom, and later worked with the Training Team to design student learning curriculum and assessments. Priyanka has also worked with Central Square Foundation, supporting grants, research, and policy design related to Foundational Literacy and Numeracy (FLN).