Strategic Program Leader | Education, Research & Philanthropy | Systems Thinker | Program Builder
I build systems that help people learn, create, and belong.
For over two decades, that’s meant showing up at the edges, where knowledge meets access, where creative tools meet underserved communities, where ambitious ideas meet institutions that weren’t built to hold them. My work has spanned makerspace communities, arts education, workforce development, and academic research across India and the United States. The throughline has always been the same: I translate ambiguous, complex goals into programs that actually deliver, in environments where the structure has to be built from scratch.
Philanthropy hasn’t been a detour in my career. It’s been the foundation. My earliest professional instincts were shaped by a conviction that access to knowledge, creative tools, and opportunity shouldn’t depend on circumstance. That belief drove the nonprofit work I built in India, including co-founding a public FabLab in Bangalore. It shaped the grant-funded arts education programs I designed, which reached 35,000+ learners. It’s behind the research questions I’ve spent years pursuing, and the cross-functional initiatives I’ve managed at UT Dallas.
I’ve always been drawn to impact, not always at scale, but to the careful work of building meaningful pilots first. People are risk-averse by nature, and institutions even more so. So I’ve learned to take the paths less tried: design proof points that demonstrate what’s possible, then use those wins to lower the barrier for others to follow. The goal was never scale for its own sake. It was always that more people deserve to be reached and sometimes you have to earn that argument one experiment at a time.
Now, completing my PhD in Arts, Technology & Emerging Communications, I’m stepping into the next chapter with intention. My dissertation examined how wearable technologies translate human signals into meaning, and what that reveals about trust, interpretation, and responsible design. That work deepened something I’ve long believed: the systems we build shape what people think is possible for themselves.
I’m actively seeking leadership engagements at the intersection of education, research, innovation, and social impact with organizations where systems thinking, strategic program leadership, and mission-driven execution are the work. I want to learn from the best-built organisations in this space, contribute meaningfully, and help design programs that hold both rigor and humanity at the same time.
If you’re working on something at the edge of knowledge, access, and lasting change, I’d love to have that conversation.
I AM GOOD AT
- Translating complex, ambiguous goals into structured programs with measurable outcomes
- Building from scratch- designing systems, teams, and processes in environments with little existing infrastructure
- Strategic program leadership across education, research, and nonprofit contexts
- Community building and stakeholder engagement across cultural and institutional boundaries
- Securing and managing grants and partnerships to fund mission-driven work
- Research design and applied inquiry, including doctoral-level work in emerging technology and human-centered systems
- Designing pilot programs that create proof points and build institutional appetite for change
- Working across disciplines, bridging creative practice, technology, policy, and education
Positions held
Senior Research Strategist & Project Manager University of Texas Dallas / IQ Design Lab | Richardson, TX, United States
Co-Founder & Chief Executive / Product Officer Workbench Projects (Public Innovation Hub) | Bangalore, India
Founder & Managing Trustee Yuva Chintana Foundation (Social Impact NGO) | Bangalore, India
Chief Creative Officer & Product Lead BrainSTARS | Bangalore, India
Programme Executive India Foundation for the Arts | Bangalore, India
Guest Faculty, College of Fine Arts | Bangalore, India
Anupama Gowda 