Kiran Bir Sethi's early training as a designer is clear in her work as an educator—she looks beyond what exists, to ask, "could we do this in a better way?" In 2001, she founded the Riverside School in Ahmedabad, designing the primary school's curriculum (and its building) from the ground up. Based around six "Beacons of Learning," the school's lesson plan focuses on creating curious, competent future citizens. The school now enrolls almost 300 children and has franchised its curriculum widely. Kiran went on to found aProCh, "A Protagonist in every Child", an effort to celebrate children’s roles as changemakers and to revamp cities to make room for kids to learn, both actively and by example. In 2009, she conceptualized and promoted India’s largest Design for Giving contest for school children, which got over 100,000 children to design solutions for some of India’s most challenging problems. Her latest endeavor, Design for Change, is active in over 33 countries and aims to reach 60,000 schools across India. She is an Ashoka Fellow and a frequent international speaker, including at TEDIndia in Nov. 2009.
