How did I transition from Hedge Fund to Education?

Reflections on six years in education and skills - educator, founder, consultant, and a policy advisor

This week I reflected on the last six years in education and skills. I’m grateful to so many people, institutions, and opportunities I have received. In this post, I’m sharing some of the key highlights, anecdotes, and reflections on completing six years in the education and skills sector and a glimpse of how I am thinking about the next six. To begin with, I didn’t have a traditional path or a degree in education.

The beginnings

For much of my life, I was raised in a small city Ludhiana in India. Until high school, it was all very academic (rote learning was a norm), a few birthday parties, a fiction here or there, and summer vacation somewhere in India or abroad.

For my college, I moved to a large city Bangalore (also known as India’s Silicon Valley) - an experience, that shaped me into who I am today. I studied Bachelor’s in Business Administration with Finance major. Bangalore city was this nice home away from home; a lot of freedom to pursue my interests, discover passion in my profession, worked several internships (back then, it wasn’t a thing in India), and made good friends.

After college, life was scripted as it happened to be for my other siblings. I aspired for a job in Goldman Sachs, landed close enough (maybe even better), a finance and operations associate at DE Shaw Group. So that year, I worked hard to be the best associate - I learned a great deal of quantitative skills, client management, operational efficiencies, working in cross-functional teams, and nuances of settling trading trades and trade operations.

I was fully committed to my day job (as it was my first job after college, and giving me a stable income, who doesn’t want!) and simultaneously worked side hustles. In doing so, I found what I call ‘my calling’ or how many of you might associate with ‘ikigai’.

Life as an Educator

It took a lot of soul-searching, research on new possibilities, informational interviews, and a big pay cut before I pursued a life as a public school educator for two years. But I guess, I was young, filled with a great deal of courage, energy, and had nothing to lose.

In 2015, I became an educator (with only four weeks of training), joined a low-resourced, low socio-economic public school in India. Wendy Kopp’s vision and work leading Teach for All inspired me to become an educator and much more.

My everyday experiences as a teacher revealed the realities of running a public school and being a teacher in one of the largest education systems in the world. I also co-founded a community-building program but failed to sustain and scale beyond 18 months (lessons learned!).

These two years left me eager to specialize in the domain, inspired to continue my efforts, and curious to find creative solutions to, “what will it take for all young people to gain access to high-quality learning experiences and life outcomes?”

Grad school

After teaching in India, I lived in Cambridge (USA) for my Master’s in International Education Policy at Harvard. In Cambridge, I was at the center of the Ed ecosystem, I worked with UNICEF, startups, academics, practitioners, and policy professionals - just to get a flavor of everything.

I did a bit of publishing with professors, consulting for EdTech startups, learned a great deal about Higher Ed in the US (Boston is the hub!), gained technical skills in evaluation, research, and statistics, framed ideas about starting my own thing, and landed a decent job in a third continent.

This grad school experience was once again a hybrid of a lot of things - developing lifelong friendships, networks, learning skills, and how to talk about my skills, and meeting interesting people and companies.

As I write this, I am aware of the grad school experience for the ‘class of 2020’, looks very different, and this may not fully make sense. Today, MOOCs, digital universities, and new COVID-born institutions have replaced in-person university experience.

These COVID-generation institutions and Ed organizations are good at delivering high-quality content, online classes, mentorships (in some cases), and creating digital communities. And the transition to ‘zoom university’ has improved accessibility and has meant educational experiences like ‘college in your bedroom’ but has challenged me to think: “Is higher education in COVID-generation all about content delivery?” - what a lost opportunity!

What about the college bundle apart from learning experience - which includes adventure for young students, multicultural exposure, dating service, career networking experience, alumni network, clubs, friendships, sports, and so much more. As I read and learn more about this topic, I will publish my thoughts and ideas.

Relocating to Australia

I’m often asked why Australia? After grad school, I relocated to Australia to work in a niche consulting firm Learning First. I came here to work on large-scale education reforms, working as a consultant with the state and federal government in Australia and Saudi Arabia. But honestly, I moved to Australia to build cultural resilience (new continent, new rules), be out of my comfort zone (I knew no one else except two friends), and gain first-hand experiences of policies and innovations in a high performing education system in the world.

When I signed the offer letter, I was juggling with a (nerd) question based on my analysis of 10 years of Australian students PISA results - the test results showed - a persistent decline in scientific, mathematical, and reading literacy among Australian students and growing achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged learners. I was desperate to figure out why was this the case?

I worked with top-ranked economists, thinkers, and influencers in the education ecosystem, to tap into their thinking about ways to improve learning experiences and life outcomes. In the process, contributed my skills in consulting, business development, data analytics, and education research and evaluations to understand this problem and design better solutions to tackle it.

Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t one reason or factor that resulted in declining student achievement. Several systemic factors including a slowing economy, political instability, lack of evidence-informed teaching and learning practices, underdeveloped accountability system, and lack of innovation sites and activity have had compounding effects over the years, and have left disadvantaged students further disadvantaged.

To understand the school system beyond consulting frameworks, reports, and political insights, I traveled more than 3000kms across different states - to meet school principals, and teachers in rural, regional, and remote Australia and hear from them.

I captured this photo while driving through South Australia for school visits in the summer of 2019

I have shared some reflections from school visits. These experiences led me to conduct a technical assessment of community-based innovation in 50 schools and also engage in thought leadership in the Australian schooling system.

I understood it wasn’t enough to know ‘what works’, it is equally important if not more, to understand nuances of cultural, social, economic, technological, and political context, and who are the influential people shaping or breaking the system.

Though Australia has its education and skills gap challenges to overcome in the next decade and beyond. Working in the Australian education system and reflecting on my experiences in developing countries, this often quoted proverb aptly describes my experience, “a developed country is not a place where the poor have cars, it’s where the rich use public transportation.”

If we apply the same ethos to education, we need to build the public school systems (in developing countries) so strong that there is little need for external interventions. That would create real equality among classes and bring social inclusion. In free time, these days, you’ll find me thinking about: what will it take to close the 100-year gap that exists between low and middle-income countries’ and high-income countries’ education systems? (for more context read: Why wait 100 years?)

Advisory role

After years of working in schooling, in July 2019, I changed it up a bit, I took all my experiences, skill sets, and networks to now work in higher education and workforce transformation in Australia at Policy, Strategy, and Impact team at RMIT University.

My current job is a mix of consulting and advisory roles but also helping teams build abstract ideas into concrete programs and products. Though my role has changed from week to week. If you are interested, I have elaborated more on my current role and its impact on Australia’s higher education in Fernando Reimer’s new book.

More precisely, I’m co-creating an education innovation and evaluation capability of a team, structuring new, innovative, and revenue-generating opportunities for the university, and occasionally engaging in policy and political discussions to progress skills reform agenda at a large scale.

In this role, I closely engage with and study publicly inspired innovations in workforce transformation, digital upskilling, and reskilling, postsecondary admissions reform, and much more. I’m beginning to appreciate the importance and intricacies of ‘strategic and influential partnerships’ in advancing large-scale systems change.

Strategic partnerships are central to large-scale reform. Structuring partnerships is more of an art and a habit than a set formula. No two partnership contracts are alike. Developing meaningful partnerships is time-consuming, involves trust, requires skills (in consensus building, negotiations, and persuasion), clarity of roles and responsibility, and risk assessment and mitigation plan. It needs a true understanding and assessment of the terms of the partnership deal, rigorous accountability mechanisms, and knowledge about what’s in and out of scope.

So what are my takeaways?

It has been five years and here are 5 key reflections on the state of education:

1. Whether you’re starting an EdTech company or thinking of transitioning into a mid to senior role or taking a career break at 40, the best perspective about what works, problems, designing solutions, or making investments, comes from stepping into a school/university or both, talking to your customer or end-user - be it students, teachers, parents, and leaders.

2. Education inequity is a multidimensional problem. As goes an often-quoted proverb, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, highlighting the power of collaborative effort and the potential of collective. When applied to education, it calls on schools, governments, industries, startups, NGOs, and philanthropists to work collaboratively in a sustained effort to prepare all young learners for the future. My recent report on unleashing the power of collective in education - is a good place to learn about this.

3. There are 250+ influences on student achievement. Identify critical levers that make the most sense for you, build your hypothesis, test, iterate, scale, assess, or change your strategy, or follow the Plan-Do-Study-Act mantra. In the last five years, working in several roles, I have developed a strong conviction for six key levers of change in education.

   Broadly they are ‘evidence-informed practices’, ‘data-for-decision making’, ‘teaching and technology’, ‘contextual understanding’, ‘strategic partnerships’, and ‘collaboration’.

   In the next five, I want to continue to build on my existing work and add several other levers mainly ‘innovative financing models in Ed - VC/PE’, ‘ help build and grow EdTech startups + community building products and platforms’, and ‘lead data for decision making capability in young organizations and established institutions. I also want to bring life to lofty ideas like ‘lifelong learning’.

4. Education is an interdisciplinary problem and cannot be solved by Education experts and Ed schools alone. We need to diversify our perspective by carefully picking our reading list (kind of subscriptions, articles, followers on Twitter and LinkedIn) and the people we meet, work, and spend time with. I truly think it is the diversity of opinions, ideas, and people and professional skills that are central to solving tough education and social problems. If we always hang out with like-minded groups of people, there is a real risk of hampering progress, innovation, and entering into the ‘eco chamber’ phenomenon.

   I recently came across a practical framework, that allows me to cut through the noise of ideas, views, and perspectives on the sector, and open up creative ways to think about reading lists.

5. My work with state and federal governments in education policy and politics brought to the fore, that, a lot of political activity and policies break because of three Is: Ideology, Ignorance, and Inertia. We can overcome this by ‘intelligence’, ‘influence’, ‘intellect’, and ‘timing of response’.

What personal and professional practices helped me?

1. There is no shortcut to becoming great at something, put in those hours.

   A very famous Malcolm Gladwell 2008 book ‘Outliers’, repeatedly mentions, the "10,000-Hour Rule". Essentially what he is saying is that the key to achieving world-class expertise in any skill is a matter of practicing that skill in the correct way, for a total of around 10,000 hours. Though many authors and researchers have disputed this finding over the years. Just for fun, I calculated it for myself:

   5 years in Ed (on average - 280 working days, 9 hours/day) = 12,600 hours, and I’ve got a lot more to learn!

   If this isn’t enough, you could also run a thought experiment suggested by Erik Torenberg: If you were magically given 10,000 hours to be amazing at something, what would it be? The more clarity you have on this response, the better off you’ll be.

2. Your career is essentially a sum of four assets: specialized knowledge/skills, raise or invest financial capital, brand/legibility that comes with your skills, and access to networks that allow you to grow

   I recently came across this career feedback loop tool, but for the most part, thought about my career in this way (not knowing there is a tool to articulate it). The tool says, there are four different types of career loops or assets that you can focus on:

   • Specialized Knowledge / Skills (“Get So Good They Can’t Ignore You”)

   • Financial Capital ($)

   • Brand / Legibility (the ability for your skills/assets to be widely recognizable)

   • Unique Network (Access/Strength)

   These loops are reinforcing - having one of each affords you more of the other. But not all loops are equal and equally powerful but have a role to play at different points in your career.

   The summary is that ‘knowledge and skills’ in a domain or at the intersection of 2-3 domains are great to attract the other loops. Want to raise financial capital?  Knowledge and skills give you opportunities to build companies that no one is building, or invest in companies that others aren’t. Unique network access and strength? Knowledge and skills allow you to build this as well. Brand/Legibility? You can build it over time with the quality of your work, confidence in your abilities - boiling down to your knowledge and skills.

3. Read, write, talk, and reflect regularly in your domain

   A professor in one of my classes at Harvard said, to become an expert/master (not a perfectionist!) at something you have to read, write, talk, and reflect in that domain(s). I would add ‘create’ as well. Make sure you are doing a little something or a combination of these elements in your day-to-day job.

4. Be close to the ecosystem

   The ecosystem is essentially where there is the most activity in your given domain of work and where there are networks, stakeholders, and actors in your field. For example: If you want to build startups, you want to be in silicon valley, if you to pursue finance, be on wall street, similarly, identify your domain by practicing 1, 2, and 3, and then place yourself at the center of the ecosystem.

5. Pursue a side hustle, if you aren’t already

   A side hustle is a hobby/passion/interest you pursue beyond your day job (Justin Mares is your best bet on this topic). It could be anything: a fitness instructor or a yoga teacher, consulting services, freelancing, writing, newsletters, podcasting, starting your own business, driving Uber, or whatever interests you. It’s like a night job but something that interests you outside your day job and gives you the freedom to schedule this hustle at your convenience.

   It has helped me turn down the volume on non-urgent matters. I also know people who have converted their side hustles into something big like a full-time business, or just earned little extra satisfaction.

P.S.

I guess by now you know - I’m an opportunist of some sort, looking out for the next hard problem to solve and thriving on new opportunities across continents.

Many things have influenced me and shaped me into who I am. Amongst other things, people, and experiences, some of the writings, speeches, interviews, and podcasts that shaped up my ideas and views about work, life, and everything in between are: How to do what you love, How to pick a career (that actually fits you), Letters to Zoe , JK Rowling’s speech at Harvard , Dean Ryan Commencement speech 2018, the work habits of silicon valley elites, Stoic Philosophy, Grow the puzzle around you , Chifundochilera.com, Farnam Street blogs and Tim Ferris podcasts.