Central Square Foundation
Reporting to: Director EdTech | Location: Delhi | Experience range: 10+ years
About Central Square Foundation
Central Square Foundation is a nonprofit organization working with the vision of ensuring quality school education for all children in India. Since 2012, we have been partnering with the government, and ecosystem stakeholders to improve the learning outcomes of children, especially from low-income communities. We are driven by our mission to enable the school education system to adopt solutions that are scalable, sustainable and effective, so that all children get equal access to opportunities needed for leading a better life. CSF has prioritized 4 critical areas of work:
1. Foundational Literacy & Numeracy (FLN)
2. EdTech
3. Early Childhood Education (ECE)
4. Schools Governance
CSFs EdTech Journey so far
One of the key areas of CSFs work is EdTech (Education Technology). Under this thematic area, we focus on how technology can be leveraged to improve the teaching-learning experience within classrooms and at home through both student-focused and teacher-directed interventions. Our goal is to leverage technology to improve foundational learning in primary grades and provide remediation support in middle school.
Since its inception in 2012, CSF has been working to shape the EdTech ecosystem by uniquely bringing together EdTech demand and supply, backed by evidence. We do this by a) supporting for-profit, non-profit, and international EdTech organizations to build contextually-relevant and pedagogically-sound products for children from low-income backgrounds; b) generating evidence of what works, how it works, and how it can be scaled; c) supporting the implementation of EdTech with government in order to influence policy; and d) funding public goods to drive innovation in the EdTech ecosystem.
Over the last five years, CSF has worked with over 15 EdTech organizations, 11+ state governments, and various academic institutions to reach over 2.5 million learners in India. Through rigorous impact evaluations, there is emerging evidence of certain hypotheses of Edtech working in low-income contexts. These are encouraging trends leading to more informed adoption by various stakeholders.
EdTech AI Strategy
As we continue to explore how EdTech can be transformative for learning for low-income children in India, innovating with frontier technologies such as Artificial Intelligence becomes key to our strategy going forward. Generative AI stands as the latest disruptive force amid the ongoing surge in Artificial Intelligence, offering transformative potential to drive innovation in the education sector. With the advancements in certain foundational capabilities such as the language understanding and voice, there is immense potential for AI to allow us to do more, to do better, and to do new, including creating new teaching and learning experiences that were previously difficult to imagine. In the coming years, CSF will explore how frontier technology can be leveraged to solve some of the most sticky problems in education and leapfrog learning for low-income students in India.
Position Summary and Responsibility
As part of the EdTech team at CSF, you'll have the chance to chart the transformation of Education for children in India through the most meaningful use of AI in Education. Youll conceptualize, design and lead impactful initiatives, collaborate with influential stakeholders, and harness AI-led technologies to revolutionize education.
The Senior Project Lead (SPL), EdTech AI will work on shaping and driving CSFs strategy for integrating generative AI into its existing portfolio and identifying areas for new investment. The SPL will provide the technical expertise for building and enhancing products with AI-based technologies. The SPL will curate partnerships with researchers, global organizations, ecosystem organizations, and startups, and collaborate with these partners for thoughtful experimentation and crafting technology solutions that can be scaled to address the sticky problems facing the education system in India. Some of the exciting use cases such as an AI-enabled personal tutor and AI-powered teacher coach, among others, are identified as potential areas of interest. The SPL will have the opportunity to drive the learning agenda with these initiatives and add to the global knowledge base on what it takes to deliver AI-based technologies for scalable impact. The Senior Project Lead, EdTech role directly reports to the Director, EdTech.
Key responsibilities include, but not limited to:
- Enhance the expanding EdTech portfolio at CSF, emphasizing AI integration in education
- Identify innovative hypotheses based on current and future trends in AI and other frontier technologies, and build a pipeline of opportunities for build and partnerships
- Closely work with grantee organizations on their overall AI strategy, program rollout, product roadmap Create technical blueprints and oversee strategic implementation for new and innovative AI-powered EdTech solutions, iterate and identify what works and what doesnt
- Enable creation of knowledge products and public goods for the ecosystem to adopt, particularly around the enabling infrastructure for AI, AI literacy initiatives, among others
- Drive engagement with ecosystem stakeholders, and create opportunities for cross-learning and collaboration
What would make you a good fit for the role
This is a greenfield role that will need the role holder to have strong commitment and work with a "whatever it takes" mindset. We're on the hunt for high performing individuals who are excited about innovating with tech and solve complex problems to make it work at scale. The SPL is expected to have a strong strategic bent of mind and exceptional leadership skills. The ability to engage and influence multiple stakeholders is essential for success. The following skills/experiences would be necessary for individuals to possess:
- Masters or equivalent degree (Background in Technology and technical expertise in AI is a must, and EdTech is preferred)
- At least 10 years of work experience in a Landscape / Technical Architecture and Product Management role
- Experience with creating technical and strategic roadmaps for technology solutions and driving innovation / product development with partners
- Strong project management skills including an ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously and manage relationships with multiple stakeholders
- High energy and drive - relentless and excited to problem solve
- Strong communication and presentation skills
- Operating style suited to working in a small-organization setting, where teamwork, collaboration and resourcefulness are highly valued, along with high ownership
