"As per the needs of the society and the industry, it is high time that our institutes start focusing on skills to make our students future-ready."
Vaishali Sharma
Director of Alternative Education
Vaishali Sharma is an Indian engineer, innovator and revolutionary educationist. She is the co-founder of Young Tinker Academy and Navonmesh Prasar Foundation, which was founded in 2015 to educate the less-privileged students of rural India through an interdisciplinary curriculum. She is also known for designing innovative labs, teaching tools, and indigenous projects which solve real-life problems. Her team at Navonmesh Prasar Foundation has impacted the lives of 1,50,000+ students across India. Vaishali is a dynamic global technology leader with an outstanding track record in driving top and bottom-line content development as well as in transforming education with book-less education System (not content-less). She’s shortlisted among the top 130 women entrepreneurs for Women Transforming India Award by NITI Aayog, Government of India.
She has over 5 years of experience across multiple and global functions including Operations Management, Alternative Education Consulting and Content development across multiple service-lines and education sectors. Vaishali has significant experience in the tech industry and has set up, led and developed social entrepreneurs for several global technologies and consulting organizations.
She’s a strong leader in driving strategic and complex transformation and education revolution across Digital, application and infrastructure. Having a blend of strong strategic expertise combined with the ability to transform operations and cultures, she has successfully created Non-profit initiatives, wherever she’s been accountable.
As the Director of Alternative Education, She have started ‘Tab-Based Learning’ method in our school. She created online S.T.E.M. content in our vernacular language which is Odia for grade 1 to 10. Hence this process of teaching has made IPSFRI (School for Rural Innovation) be a ‘Bookless Education System’ as our students are not just confined to the books. The tab-based learning method helps the student to understand their concepts even better as the platform also offers a hands-on experiment.
In 2021, She created India’s 1st U-19 team which secured World Rank 3 in NASA’s Rover Challenge 2021. This student team comprises students from all spheres of life such as an 18 -year old boy who was earlier a cycle mechanic, and a 19-year old girl who worked in a welding shop to name a few. This Indian team made everyone realise the potential of the students at the grassroots. She also received prestigious awards like 3M-CII YICA Special Impact prize; Award of Excellence by STPI, Govt of India; Listed in top 130 women transforming India by Govt of India and many more. She believes the women’s talents whom we nurture are the true achievements of her work.