Growing up in Mumbai with parents who defied gender and religious norms, I learned early on to challenge stereotypes. But as I navigated the last 15 years of my career, I saw firsthand how deeply entrenched gender inequality is, starting in early adolescence and persisting throughout life.

In my work, I’ve strived to shift power to girls, women, and youth by listening, co-creating, and ensuring their voices drive design and decision-making. I believe that when we build with communities, we create lasting impact.

A window into inequity: From New York to Mumbai classrooms

My formal deep dive into education inequity was in New York, where I pursued my undergraduate degree. I conducted fieldwork in underfunded public schools serving predominantly African American and Latino students, observing the systemic barriers that limited their opportunities. My honours thesis on self-awareness in children reinforced the power of socio-emotional learning in shaping a child’s life.

But it was only when I returned to India as a Teach For India fellow in 2010 that I grasped the full complexity of education inequity at home. While I taught second and third graders in a government school in Mumbai, I was exposed to the state education system, which provides free education to the most underserved students. I saw glaring gaps beyond academics — a curriculum that didn’t build life skills, teachers who weren’t trained in effective pedagogy, school leaders who were overburdened, and girls dropping out of secondary school before realising their potential. 

Determined to go beyond the classroom, I spent time in the Shindewadi community, engaging families to understand their aspirations. In response to their needs, my co-teacher and I designed parent engagement modules and started literacy classes for mothers, which soon evolved into self-help groups where women could earn income by selling handmade goods.

Building Just For Kicks: Fighting for girls in sport and beyond

In the second year of my fellowship, I co-founded Just For Kicks, a nonprofit that used football as a tool for life skills development for children in government and low-cost private schools. Our vision was simple: level the playing field for both girls and boys.

But in our first year, 95% of our participants were boys. Parents refused to let girls play. They feared their daughters would get darker, injure themselves, and have to wear “inappropriate” attire to play. This would make them “unfit for marriage.” Convincing families meant years of persistence, going door to door, building trust, and creating girl-focused interventions that tackled sexual and reproductive health, nutrition, and gender rights.

After three years of relentless advocacy, the program evolved:

• 50% of our students were girls.
• Girls broke barriers to eventually become coaches, role models, and even state-level football players.
• Girls travelled internationally, expanding their aspirations beyond societal expectations.

But as these girls grew older, I saw a disturbing trend. Many who thrived in the  Just For Kicks program were still forced to drop out of school, pushed into early marriage or left without opportunities to transition into economic independence. Sports had built their confidence, but they needed further knowledge, skills, and support to transition from school to work. Their ecosystems hadn’t changed enough to support their long-term success. I realized that if we wanted to create lasting gender equity, we needed solutions that didn’t just enable girls but challenged and transformed the systems that held them back.

Launching girls into economic opportunity

By 2021, I had worked in both urban and rural India, travelled across South Asia, and researched adolescent girl development and economic mobility in the Global South. While more girls than ever were graduating from school, their academic success wasn’t translating into work readiness or financial independence. 

With 600 million adolescent girls worldwide, investing in their education offers the highest returns for building resilient, equitable societies. Socio-economic gender discrimination begins early, exposing girls to risks like child marriage, malnutrition, and gender-based violence, ultimately limiting their autonomy and opportunities. To break this cycle, we must apply a girl-focused lens, ensuring they gain the skills, knowledge, and support needed to thrive, be equally represented, and succeed in constantly changing economic environments. Existing economic empowerment models either focus on women (excluding adolescent girls) or operate as co-ed youth programs, failing to address gender-specific barriers that prevent girls from thriving. That’s why Averil Spencer and I co-founded Launch Girls — to take a gender and intersectional lens to entrepreneurship education, ensuring girls develop entrepreneurial mindsets and skills, agency, and a strong support system, to control their futures. We designed Girl Boss, a program tailored to meet girls where they are, ensuring they receive research-backed, culturally relevant interventions. 

Since 2020, we’ve partnered with 32 organisations across 16 countries in South Asia and Africa, reaching 27,000 girls and young women aged between 14 and 24.  Here are three key lessons we've learned from these inspiring changemakers:

1: It all starts with the right mindset

Growing up in Rwanda, Annette (14-years-old; partner: SHE) helped her mother sell maize, but she never thought of herself as an entrepreneur. Self-doubt held her back. Half a world away, Hauwa (16-years-old; partner: Nigeria Reads) from Nigeria lacked confidence in her hairstyling skills and never considered her hobby a business. When these girls learned about other young women who run businesses and that entrepreneurship can start small — they saw themselves as entrepreneurs. They allowed themselves to be inspired and believe in themselves and their abilities. Annette honed her public speaking, embraced independence, and now sees her maize business as a stepping stone to becoming a soldier — her ultimate dream. Hauwa runs her own salon in her neighbourhood, turning her talent into income. She acknowledges that it took confidence in herself to charge for her hairstyling and build something of her own.

2: Co-create and build relationships to stay relevant and relatable

While our programs have been implemented in 16 countries, we don’t assume expertise in every context. Instead, we bring evidence-based frameworks with a gender-focus that are adapted to local realities by those who know their communities best. In 2022, we partnered with Head Held High Foundation (HHH) in India and together we developed Girl Boss Future Ready — a blend of the 21st century skill development and agency building for girls that we specialize in and the critical work readiness (resume writing, interview prep, career placement) that HHH is known for. We worked closely with the HHH team to design a program with input from facilitators and girls from the community in different parts of Karnataka. It ultimately brings together ground realities of the local labour market while still future-proofing young women with skills that will support them personally and professionally for the rest of their lives. Through this process, HHH has come to appreciate the barriers that girls face when transitioning from school to work and how to design programs that directly address these gendered challenges. 

3: Leadership is local, change is global

Helvecia Takwe, a grassroots leader from World Economy Skills and Agro Development, started Girl Boss in Bamenda, Cameroon in 2022. By 2024, she brought entrepreneurship programming to 674 girls and is currently helping an enterprising group of 25 girls aged 16-20 build a briquette business — an alternate eco-friendly source for cooking. 

Imrose, a lecturer at Telangana Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society in India, wanted to help girls change within their school through Girl Boss Clubs. In just weeks, 25 girls identified that a critical gap in school was the lack of support new students received. These girls stepped up as ‘big sisters,’ welcoming and supporting new students struggling with homesickness. Through conversations and shared experiences, they helped newcomers adjust, turning their boarding school into a stronger, more supportive community.

With Launch Girls, I am committed to ensuring that every girl, regardless of her background, has the opportunity to pursue her dreams, take control of her future, and shape the world around her. This International Women’s Day, let’s celebrate the strong female grassroots leaders, educators, and facilitators who bring this vision to life from Kenya’s tribal communities and Rwanda’s rural schools to Tanzania’s rural communities and India’s college classrooms.