Education Revolution: Sumana Setty and Sejal Gehani Of Commit2Change On Innovative Approaches That Are
Transforming Education
An interview with Eden Gold
I wish I’d had Valerie, our Executive Director, and Kuber, our Executive Director in India from day one. We have a great team now, but at the beginning we were so focused on bootstrapping and doing it ourselves. If I did it again, I’d develop a team to help right from the start.
The landscape of education is undergoing a profound transformation, propelled by technological advancements, pedagogical innovations, and a deepened understanding of learning diversities. Traditional classrooms are evolving, and new modes of teaching and learning are emerging to better prepare students for the complexities of the modern world. This series will take a look at the groundbreaking work being done across the globe to redefine education. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Sumana Setty and Sejal Gehani, co-founders of Commit2Change. Commit2Change (C2C) was founded on the belief that girls have the ability to take control of their lives and create positive change in their communities when empowered with the proper educational tools and support.
Sejal Gehani is co-founder of Commit2Change (C2C), and a Family Nurse Practitioner. After working with Boston University Medical Center and Sydney Borum Homeless Youth Shelter, Sejal moved to Chicago in 2002 and provided comprehensive medical care to the adolescent population at Children’s Memorial Hospital and a community clinic. Over the past 12 years, Sejal has practiced in the specialty of Integrative Medicine where she provides primary medical care to a wide range of patients, and she recently co-founded a medical practice called I-Squared Medical Group in Chicago.
Sumana Setty is the General Counsel of a private equity fund, where she applies her extensive legal expertise to navigate complex financial landscapes. A dedicated advocate for social change, Sumana co-founded Commit2Change (C2C). She is also a founding member of the Leadership Council for AIF-Sahaya, which focuses on raising awareness for women and girls in India. In addition, Sumana serves as an adviser to Empower Co, a for-profit organization building the first global voluntary market to measurably scale women’s empowerment. With a blend of legal acumen and a strong commitment to philanthropy, Sumana strives to drive meaningful change both in the boardroom and in the community.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share the “backstory” behind what brought you to this particular career path?
Sumana: My story started when I was clerking for human rights activist Rani Jethmalani. She was working in the space of dowry abuse and advocating for women. Dowry abuse is a practice where traditionally the wife’s family gives a substantial amount of wealth to their daughter at marriage.
What often happens is that the groom’s family gets greedy, and at the time of marriage asks for astronomical amounts, which the bride’s family pays to avoid the stigma of a broken marriage. But then once she’s joined the family, those requests don’t stop. Now she’s in the household, and she’s being harassed and abused to continue to provide more wealth to their family, in some cases even being burned alive by the groom’s family. A lot of these cases are never resolved, which is so disheartening.
Years later it hit me: I was visiting an orphanage in India that was seeking funds for girls’ education, and I thought, if you can get to a girl at an earlier stage in her life, then maybe she can have the tools and resources that she needs to start advocating for herself. If she is educated, she has a path out of that abuse, and the skills to do something different. Education is the key.
Sejal: For me growing up, my family would visit India, and philanthropy was a huge part of that. On one of those visits my aunt introduced me to an organization that I began volunteering for, that was trying to help girls that were involved in child marriages, sex trafficking, and worse. Coming back to the US to raise awareness for South Asian organizations, I saw how a little went so far. With just a modest donation, we could get people out of these traumatic situations and onto a path towards a brighter future.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Sumana: The moment I will never forget is when I met a girl named Sumana. I don’t have a very common name. And she was born in the same city in India as I was. Both girls, from the same city, with the same name. How did my life turn out the way it did versus her life? And what was so gutting, not only was she already HIV-positive, not only had she already been abandoned by her parents, but her name — our name — means “good heart.” So, when they named her, they had some love for this child.
What shifted? What changed? Was it the disease? Life can turn on a dime. You just can’t take life for granted. And having that experience, meeting someone with your exact name from the same city, and she was abandoned, you just can’t forget that, or sit by and let it happen.
Sejal: Like Sumana says, it’s easy to start with the statistics, and they’re striking: 130 million girls out of school; 153 million orphaned children; a child is the victim of sex trafficking every two minutes; one in four girls in India married as children. The numbers are all so large and daunting.
But when you actually meet a child that’s impacted by those statistics, those numbers hit you like a ton of bricks. Everything changes because you’re dealing with the real people behind the numbers.
For me there isn’t one story that stands out. I have traveled India with my daughters and taken them to partner orphanages that C2C supports, and they have had the chance to share stories with the girls there. All the girls share the same curiosity and love for life despite how different their circumstances are. I want to level the playing field and provide disadvantaged Indian girls the same opportunities as my daughters.
Can you briefly share with our readers why you are an authority in the education field?
Sumana: It’s our desire to create impact. It is not just about providing school fees or supplies or focusing on attendance, but about creating a deeper systemic shift that changes the trajectory of a girl’s life. You have to look at the whole picture: why isn’t she in school, why isn’t she thriving? We can provide the school fees but if she isn’t learning and if she is not passing her exams then you are not shifting her narrative.
We believe our holistic focus on creating agency through both hard and “soft” skills — what we call the 4C’s: critical thinking, creativity, confidence, and communication — is what works, and what will change the trajectory of a girl’s life. These girls have suffered enormous traumas and forcing them into rote learning is not success — but making learning interesting is. When you force her to read she will not learn, but if you tell her to write a play and act in it, then you are allowing her to escape her day-to-day at the same time advancing her skills in English, communication, creativity, and building confidence. From there, success begets success.
We’ve seen that because of the way that we’ve taught our girls, they are excelling at a faster pace than girls who are not part of C2C.
Can you identify some areas of the global education system that are going really great?
Sumana: The education system is not doing a good job. Virtually every country, rich and poor, is facing inequality and social traumas. The system is broken, schools are under-resourced, teachers are underpaid, and motivation is low for the educators as well as the students.
Sejal: I absolutely agree. Especially in Third World countries — the importance of education isn’t universally shared. It’s not even seen as an option for everyone, especially the populations we’re trying to address. We need to recognize that everyone — including girls — deserve quality education.
Can you identify the key areas of the education system that should be prioritized for improvement? Can you explain why those are so critical?
Sumana: I think as a society we have developed a playbook for education that gets replicated without a lot of reflection, but a “one size fits all” model doesn’t work for everyone. You need to be able to evolve to the needs of communities and children. For example, girls need to feel safe to come to school when they are menstruating; that is a huge issue in South Asia. A study conducted in India with 100,000 girls found that 25% of the girls aged between 10 and 19 missed school when they were on their period. In Nepal, 33% of girls skip school coursework during their period.
I also believe there has to be more attention paid in rural areas on why it is important for children, particularly girls, to go to school. One of our partners, FFLV, has done an amazing job making the process seamless for parents — they pick up, feed, and drop off the children, and in certain cases they’ll find employment for their parents, on the condition they keep their girls in school. I really think we need to utilize all the tools in our toolbox to make education effective.
Sejal: Counseling and training for teachers is key; so is paying people more. Without qualified teachers the system breaks down. On the training side, we need to provide teachers with the resources and tools to enhance their own skills. We’re also doing a lot right now on digital literacy; if you look at the job market we’re sending girls into and the need for skilled, trained young people who are digitally literate, our programs and STEM training are real difference makers.
Please tell us all about the innovative educational approaches that you are using. What is the specific problem that you aim to solve, and how have you addressed it?
Sejal: We’re solving for the next generation of talent and building sustainability skills. A lot of NGOs just focus on making sure a girl goes to school and graduates. That’s important, but to us, we say: “okay, what’s next?” How can we make our girls part of the solution, and help to close the skills gap facing employers in South Asia? The “what’s next” is what creates the ripple effect from educating a girl.
We’re taking an intentional approach to that challenge — whether it’s providing fellowships, or leaning into skilling girls in emerging sectors, like climate and ag tech, so that C2C girls are a meaningful part of the next-gen talent pool. If you look at how the world can achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, our work is meant to address that, so we’re not only uplifting girls and creating next generation talent, but we are addressing no poverty, zero hunger, good health and well being, quality education, gender equality, reduced inequalities and climate action through our work.
One example of this approach in action is a new initiative we’re rolling out called Driving for Change, a pioneering mobile bus model that delivers C2C’s proven STEM education, counseling, and life skills training to girls in rural and other hard-to-reach communities. Through strategic partnerships with local school systems, we’ll offer a comprehensive range of activities including STEM workshops, English and public speaking classes, and vital social and emotional counseling over the course of several months at each location. This kind of initiative is wholly unique to the areas of India we’ll be taking the bus next year.
Sumana: If roughly half your population or more is not adding economic value, how can the system overall rise? In India, less than 25% of the Indian workforce is female and the contribution of women to India’s GDP is just 18%, one of the lowest proportions in the world. This untapped potential translates to a staggering loss for the nation amounting to billions of dollars.
The answer is education — if educated, girls could contribute up to $30 trillion into the global economy. India could boost its growth by 1.5 percentage points to 9 percent per year if around 50% of women could join the workforce.That’s what’s innovative to me — giving girls the confidence and the skills that are going to push a country forward.
In what ways do you think your approach might shape the future of education? What evidence supports this?
Sumana: We’re trying to inspire an approach that thinks about education and girls holistically. That’s where the life skills and “4C’s” come in. We want girls to have a voice, and to have dreams and have confidence. Our approach is extremely effective: we have a 99% success rate of participating girls enrolled in secondary school or college. It’s encouraging progress when you consider that just over 20% of girls between the ages of 15 and 19 in India complete at least 12 years of schooling.
By that metric alone, we’d hope that Indian and South Asian education ministries and leaders would sit up, take notice and shift how they educate girls. We’d love to see them adopt a more three-dimensional approach.
Sejal: We’re trying to level the playing field for C2C girls, so that when they graduate, they have the same opportunity set available to them as other children, whether in India or elsewhere in the world, and regardless of class or status. This approach is about recognizing that a girl is valid, that no matter where she’s from, her dreams are valid. We’re changing education, and ultimately humanity because we’re changing the landscape for girls.
How do you measure the impact of your innovative educational practices on students’ learning and well-being?
Sejal: As an organization, we’re looking closely at quantitative improvements and metrics — in grades, in outcomes like graduation rates. Sumana mentioned the 99%; the numbers all tell a powerful story:
- Almost 9,000 girls helped
- Test scores and board passing rates above the national average
- A 75% boost in math scores across grades 1–8
- A 61% improvement in math scores across grades 3–8
- Among C2C girls in grades 1–4, 60% achieved English proficiency, compared to only 25% locally
- Progress towards at least seven of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals with direct impact on “No Poverty,” “Quality Education,” “Gender Equality,” and Reduced Inequities,” and indirect impact on “Good Health and Well Being,” “Decent Work and Economic Growth,” and “Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions”
These are big numbers, and they show real progress. We also look closely at the qualitative piece: checking in with girls, doing one-on-one surveys, understanding from teachers and partners their experience. Our model is a blend of curriculum and life skills; our measurement is as well.
What challenges have you faced in implementing your educational innovations, and how have you overcome them?
Sejal: The biggest obstacle has been working with Third World countries and being ingrained in whatever education system was handed to the girls we’re trying to serve. It’s hard to break through the institutional barriers and instill our approach in a bad system. Having someone on the ground now, with executive directors in South Asia, has helped to break down some of those barriers and has given us more of a voice.
Sumana: This has been a 14-year journey. For the first few years, there wasn’t a holistic program because that’s something we couldn’t even fathom. We took a very binary approach — if the orphanage needed school fees, we paid them, if they needed food, we purchased it. But we realized that there is so much power in educating a girl, and if we were only scratching the surface there was no way we could unleash it. So we have iterated over the years to create a program that is adaptive — it begins with access, and then we focus on agency — giving her the skills she needs to thrive and then finally elevation — helping her find her pathways.
What are your “5 Things I Wish I Knew When I First Started”?
Sejal: Any amount of money, whether it’s a dollar versus $100,000, when you’re raising it in the nonprofit world it takes maximum effort. Whatever your cause, however much you’re seeking, there is no easy dollar in this sector.
Sumana: I wish I’d had Valerie, our Executive Director, and Kuber, our Executive Director in India from day one. We have a great team now, but at the beginning we were so focused on bootstrapping and doing it ourselves. If I did it again, I’d develop a team to help right from the start.
Sejal: Mentorship on how to develop an organization, versus just working from our own experience. We were doing this as volunteers, and trying to do something good. But having more understanding on what it means to start a non-profit, and how to evolve with purpose.
Sumana: I wish we’d had more of a theory of change, which took some time to develop, and been more intentional about what we wanted to do holistically. We started out saying, okay, we want to send girls to school. Let’s raise some money, maybe pay their school fees. But it’s so much more complicated than that — the challenges run much deeper. And today our model does too.
Sejal: Along with the model for the program itself, I might have thought a little earlier about the framing and the brand. There are organizations with very simple value propositions; but the way we’re solving these problems is nuanced, and we’ve pivoted a lot. Is it too complicated? Not when you talk to the girls. But you always have to be conscious of how you’re telling your story.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Sumana: “Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
We’re all about organic growth and being able to attract people and grow each year. So, the quote, to me, is how C2C succeeds — we invite people to be part of the journey.
Sejal: “Fulfill your dreams and don’t let anyone frustrate you.” I lead with this in mind when I’m on the ground with our girls. We support them to follow their dreams, but it takes resilience and strength.
We are grateful that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
Sumana: Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Sejal: Michelle Obama; what she’s doing with the Girls Opportunity Alliance and the “Get Her There” campaign is so resonant with what we’re doing with girls’ education. I’d love to sit and have a conversation with her.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
Both: Commit2Change is online everywhere — at our website, on X, Facebook and Instagram. If readers are inspired by anything they’ve heard, we’d love for them to sign up for our newsletter, or partner with us.
Thank you so much for these insights! This was so inspiring!
About The Interviewer: Eden Gold, is a youth speaker, keynote speaker, founder of the online program Life After High School, and host of the Real Life Adulting Podcast. Being America’s rising force for positive change, Eden is a catalyst for change in shaping the future of education. With a lifelong mission of impacting the lives of 1 billion young adults, Eden serves as a practical guide, aiding young adults in honing their self-confidence, challenging societal conventions, and crafting a strategic roadmap towards the fulfilling lives they envision.
Do you need a dynamic speaker, or want to learn more about Eden’s programs? Click here: https://bit.ly/EdenGold.
Education Revolution: Sumana Setty and Sejal Gehani Of Commit2Change On Innovative Approaches That… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.