Varsha Thakur

Varsha Thakur holds an M.A. in Politics with specialization in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University and a Bachelor’s in Political Science from the University of Delhi. With over five years of experience in the education sector, she has demonstrated leadership in designing scalable learning solutions for over one million students across Africa and India.

She is interested in working on durable public goods such as education. As Deputy Managing Editor, Instructional Design at NewGlobe, she led a diverse team that developed foundational literacy and numeracy materials. She has co-authored 9 reading- level based homework books. In 2023, her team delivered tailored resources to children affected by conflict in Manipur, India. Her area of work includes integrating AI and technology into educational design, training teams on prompt engineering, and leading government education projects.

She believes that education has the power to bring sustainable peace in the world and enable people to live a life with dignity. She has managed instructional design teams working on high-stakes partnerships such as EdoBEST, a project of the Edo State government and the World Bank aimed at transforming public education. She has also contributed to crisis response by creating remote learning materials and radio-based lessons during the COVID-19 pandemic for a wider reach.

As a Rotary Peace Fellow, she seeks to merge educational innovation with peacebuilding to mitigate the learning poverty crisis. In the MEITE program at UNC-Chapel Hill, she aims to gain academic training, work on the intersection of education and emerging technologies, and contribute to initiatives that foster peace, equity, and lifelong learning.

Driven by Rotary’s principle of Service Above Self, she aspires to lead transformative change in international development, and empowering communities through education.