Smita Deorah, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of LEAD, India’s first School edtech unicorn, was recognized with the ‘Power of Women (POW!) 2022’ award at the ASU+GSV Summit, an annual event that brings together global leaders who are transforming the future of education and work.  Smita is the only leader from India to win the prestigious POW! award this year. 

The POW! awards ceremony was held in San Diego, California earlier this week.  The awards recognise female CEOs leading and achieving successful outcomes for companies at scale in the learning and talent technology sectors.  Each year, the ASU+GSV summit is attended by global Learning and Workforce technology CEOs, investors, pre K-12 leaders, higher education leaders, chief learning and talent officers, policymakers and social entrepreneurs.

LEAD is India’s largest school edtech platform and serves over 1.6 million students across 4,000+ schools. LEAD was started in 2012 with a mission to transform school education in India. Smita has been instrumental in developing the LEAD integrated system with extensive benchmarking with the best education systems in the world and contextualizing them for the unique needs of affordable schools in India.

Before co-founding LEAD, Smita founded Sparsh, a non-profit working with the Government of Maharashtra in preschools in Mumbai. She implemented a preschool in a box solution in 16 preschools around Mumbai to get students school ready and thereby reduce dropouts and low attainment. Before that, Smita spent 9 years in Procter & Gamble Singapore and India as a leader in finance, treasury and strategy.

Also read: Women’s Day series: Smita Deorah, co-founder and co-CEO of LEAD