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Madhukar Banuri

What are you leading?

I am presently the Founder CEO of 'Leadership For Equity' working with a mission to practice and build leadership rooted in radically changing public education systems in India. Over the last two years, my work was primarily focused with Pune & Maharashtra governments at different levels. Our work in Pune through Pune City Connect (PCC) is inspired by the idea of Collective Action, where we work with municipal administrators, corporate leaders, NGO’s and school teams - to develop and implement a working agenda for scaling quality education. As I aspire to build an organization known for creating proof points for innovative scale-depth models in systemic education reforms, I am intrigued about creating system leaders who constantly reflect and practice systems thinking. I am also conscious that we just started our journey and hence in the approach we take to lead our four current projects, we have to constantly keep learning and evolving.

How did your experiences as a fellow inspire or prepare you for what you’re doing now?

I believe that before we try to change the status quo it’s important to empathize with it. My fellowship as a teacher in a government school setting has helped me empathize. Working alongside with other public school teachers, school leaders and parents has provided me an opportunity to be open to different perspectives on education. It was really hard to find my role in the larger education eco-system when I was focused on teaching just 35 students in a class, but the experience of working with key school stakeholders has pushed me to think of my contribution beyond my classroom – to my school and community. The difficult experiences with the local leaders and officials enhanced my understanding of working in chaotic systems and working with uncertainty – in hindsight the experiences in Fellowship has helped me deal with systemic complexities better. As I think of all the smaller and larger experiences that shaped me as an individual in those two years – they have definitely laid my foundations of working on adaptive challenges and having a systems thinking lens to solve complex problems.

What's next?

In the next 5 years, I was to solidify my commitment to ‘One Day all children’ by working on large-scale education reform projects to improve the quality of public education systems in India. I want to achieve this by consciously building a pipeline of system leaders who are rooted in the idea of changing human relationships in changing systems; who simplify the complexity of social problems for the end users; who use appropriate tools to realize the role of self & organizations in chaotic eco-systems; who practice adaptive solutions to build a simultaneous and dynamic top-down and bottom-up approach to manage change; and most importantly, leaders who operate with humility, optimism and the perseverance needed to move the world forward. In the quest of building and practicing leadership, I also want to closely involve with the political leadership, to prove that in a country like India you can win elections with Education as your key agenda item.

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Alumni info

Partner

Alumni Cohort

2009

Current Home

Pune, India

Subject(s) Taught

English, Math, Science & Social Studies

Connect on Social Media

Twitter

Learn More

https://www.linkedin.com/in/madhukarbanuri

Leadership Journey

2009

Joining the Fellowship in Pune, as a part of first cohort of TFI – taught 35 Grade 3 students in a government school

2010

Implemented a Be-The-Change-Project (BTCP) on setting up Library Science & Computer Lab in school for the 700 students.

2011

Graduated from the Fellowship program and inducted into the Alumni movement – stayed back with TFI managing the relationships with schools, communities and local government.

2012

Executed low-stake school transformation projects with 15 TFI Fellows, 2 Staff members and 4 school leaders.

2013

Led the expansion of TFI Pune site – with increased number of school placements and Fellows reach across diverse communities across Pune City and semi-urban set ups.

2015

Moved out of TFI to set up Pune City Connect Education vertical as an experiment to drive collective action to improve the quality of 250 regional medium public school network. Started the first flagship project (Sahyogi Dal) working with 1500 public school teachers serving 60,000 students.

2016

Started liaising with the State Government to strengthen the education apex bodies of the State of Maharashtra. Two systemic projects took shape.

2016

Started the fourth project: School Improvement in Pune, directly serving 5300 students with 12 partners driving collective action.

2017

Founded ‘Leadership For Equity LFE’ with a mission to practice and build leadership rooted in radically changing the public education system in India, working at multiple levels within the government machinery. The existing four projects transition into LFE.

Support

2009

Coached & supported by some amazing program managers at TFI in the initial months of my teaching.

2010

Supported by friends and family to raise fund and establish.

2012

Supported by TFI funders and the city team to lead the project, from within TFI.

2013

Supported by the internal TFI teams like recruitment & selection to matriculate almost 100% of Fellows three years in row.

2015

Supported by the internal TFI teams like recruitment & selection to matriculate almost 100% of Fellows three years in row.

2016

Recruited TFI Alums who could potentially led multiple teams in the organization. Inducted as TFI Advisory Board member that gave credibility in the leadership.

2017

LFE was Co-founded with other TFI Alums. TFI constantly working on building leadership pipeline for LFE and its work.

2017

Strong though partnership from TFAll Alums from across the globe, through Community of Practice on Education Policy.