ASHISH DHAWAN, Founder, Central Square Foundation (CSF), is an Edu-philanthropist, as well as a key voice for reforming educational systems, processes and practices, in India. Arefreshing human, with a noble national social vision.
Mr Dhawan graduated from Yale and Harvard, in the USA. After graduation, he spent almost 20 years in investment management, founding and running one of India’s leading private equity firms, Chrys Capital.
As a student, well before establishing Chrys Capital, Mr Dhawan was very clear that he will migrate to a second career, in his mid-40s. He dreamt about investing his time and financial resources for a greater purpose in life. His search eventually gravitated to the education sector. In 2012, Mr Dhawan founded CSF.
Mr Dhawan had realized that India has the largest school system in the world, with 1.5 million schools and 250 million students. However, he believed the system is grossly under-performing, with more than half of all students in Grade 5 unable to read Grade 2 textbooks. Consequently, the CSF mission is to improve the quality of school education, in India.
CSF has become one of the most innovative and influential organizations for improving the education sector. CSF seeds early stage edu-organizations, such as Khan Academy. It also works with the Government on key edu-issues, such as launching a teacher training platform that directly reaches 8.5 million teachers.
Mr Dhawan walks his talk.
part from school education, Mr Dhawan is also active in improving the higher education sector. He has co-founded Ashoka University. In less than 4 years of its existence, University has become a champion for promoting a broad liberal arts curriculum instead of narrow specializations. It is also India’s first not-for-profit university. Mr Dhawan is Chairman, Board of Trustees. leads resource mobilization, planning and growth of the university.
Mr Dhawan is tireless. He has recently helped establish the Indian School of Development Management, a unique school to create development managers for the social sector.
A visionary mind. Mr Dhawan is now working on creating institutions specializing in agriculture and public service delivery. Also, on increasing people-to-people exchanges between India and China.
Mr Dhawan. reformer. An achiever. man with a mission.
We salute Mr Ashish Dhawan. Our Qimpro Platinum Standard 2019 for Education.