Smita Deorah, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of LEAD was conferred with the ‘Power of Women (POW) 2022’ award at the ASU+GSV Summit. It is an annual event that brings together global leaders which have played significant role in transforming the future of education. She is the first leader from India to win this prestigious award.

The awards ceremony was held earlier this week in San Diego, California. These awards recognise female CEOs for achieving remarkable outcomes in talent technology and learning sectors. The ASU+GSV summit every year is attended by pre K-12 and higher education leaders, global learning CEOs, chief-learning and talent officers, investors, social entrepreneurs, and policymakers.

Being India’s largest school EdTech platform, LEAD serves over more than 1.6 million students across 4,000 schools. It started in 2012 with an objective to transform school education in India by combining deeply researched curriculum, pedagogy, and technology.   Smita has been instrumental in developing the LEAD integrated system according to the customized requirements and learning capabilities of Indian schools and students.   

Her primary aim is to bridge the gap between the top high-fee schools and affordable private schools to make quality learning affordable for underprivileged communities. With its vision of making quality education affordable for everyone, LEAD aims to impact the lives of 26 million school students across 65,000 schools by 2026.

Before co-founding LEAD, Smita founded Sparsh. It is a non-profit working with the Government of Maharashtra for the pre-schools in Mumbai. She implemented a pre-school in a box solution in 16 pre-schools around Mumbai to make students school ready and thereby reduce low attainment and dropouts.