Taylor Jacobson: Teach For India
My name is Taylor Jacobson and I’m an analyst in Oliver Wyman’s Boston office. I spent five months in 2008-09 in and around Pune, India, helping to launch Teach For India.
Teach For India is a national movement working to narrow the educational gap in India by placing India’s most outstanding college graduates and young professionals in low-income schools to teach for two years.
I used my blog, One in a Billion: Reflections from India, to report on my experiences, from the mundane to the potentially life-altering, and to share some of the valuable lessons I learned along the way. Since I've returned to Boston, I've had the opportunity to step back and take a broader perspective, and to capture my thoughts in an article, Gandhiism 101: Learning to Be the Change.
You can start below and click the links to keep reading.
Gandhiism 101: Learning to Be the Change
My five months with Teach For India were a lesson in pursuing one’s mission at all costs – in this case, education reform. Ultimately, it was less about how and more about why.
“School visit! We’re doing a school visit!” It was Thursday, September 12, my second day in India, and Shaheen Mistri, the CEO of Teach For India, was matter-of-factly rounding up stray people in the office for an ad-hoc trip to a nearby school.
A minute later I found myself unceremoniously piled into a borrowed car with seven near-strangers. Most of them worked for Akanksha, a non-profit which Shaheen had founded as a college student 19 years earlier, and whose office space Teach For India shares. As we pulled onto the road, the Mumbai traffic closed in tightly around us. Moments later, I began to sweat profusely in the torrid heat, which had arrived long before the sun’s peak.
Continue reading Gandhiism 101: Learning to Be the Change >
One in a Billion: Reflections from India
Today is Tuesday, August 26, 2008, which is technically six days before my Non-Profit Fellowship is scheduled to begin. The confluence of several factors is creating something of a knot in my stomach.
Pre-emptive nostalgia. The past 15 months have been, without question, the best time of my life – stable, happy, rewarding, fun, and full of growth – and leaving for India is a definitive pivot. Sure, I’m only leaving for 5 months, but I can feel the seismic plates shifting beneath me already. I tell myself that the time is right, though, that I’m ready to leap.
Anticipation. I’m excited! Helping launch Teach For India – leveraging the “consulting toolkit” I’ve theoretically assembled – is at the intersection of so many of my career interests. The underpinning is that my future vision of myself is as a social entrepreneur using education (building infrastructure, creating policy, disseminating best practices) as a vehicle for change.
Read my blog from the beginning. One in a Billion: Reflections from India >
