High-paying job placements are on the decline for MBA graduates of Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, and other top B-schools in America, according to a recent study by The Wall Street Journal. 23% of Harvard Business School’s 2024 MBA batch have remained unemployed for the past 3 months. It provides a contrast to the non-corporate sector with myriad opportunities for purpose-driven leadership that zeroes in on a noble vision and mission, rather than revenues and ROI.
Teach for America, one of the largest nonprofits in the US, has decided to trust Indian American Aneesh Sohoni with its top leadership baton from the departing CEO Elisa Villanueva Beard. Aneesh Sohoni, as the next CEO of Teach for America, is looking to come back home in April 2025. He euphorically looks upon this opportunity as his homecoming as he started his career and the journey to becoming a leading educationist at Teach for America in 2009.
Teach for America is a nationwide community of changemakers, including “leaders who teach, and teachers who lead” to illuminate your minds from low-income families in US public schools. As CEO of the organization with 35 years of impact on the uneven landscape of American education, Aneesh Sohoni will be heading a network of 70,000 alumni, teachers, tutors, and staff to prepare every child for a bright future, thereby driving the country’s socio-economic growth.
Aneesh whose Indian immigrant parents live in Minneapolis, was in the pool of promising college graduates that Teach for America had recruited in early 2009. Two years of teaching English as a corps member of TFA set his career path forever. “My life changed when I became a corps member. My students in my Twin Cities high school classroom were incredible and their potential was only matched in size by the challenges they faced in an unjust education system. I knew then I needed to make this my life’s work,” Aneesh shared in a LinkedIn post.
His passion for transformative education catapulted him to Tennessee where he worked as the Chief of Staff to Assistant Commissioner for Teachers and Leaders for nearly 3 years. The role of a project director at a New York-based nonprofit that strives to improve America’s education system in high-needs schools was his next venture for two years. His dedication to uplifting communities through education led to him being roped in as Teach for America’s Executive Director for Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana.
After shouldering the responsibilities of a zonal Executive Director for TFA, from 2016 through 2021, Aneesh Sohoni took a leap as CEO of One Million Degrees in Chicago. OMD empowers Greater Chicago’s deserving community college students from low-income families to excel in education, career, and life, so they could become important cogs and wheels in America’s growth engine. As CEO of One Million Degrees, Aneesh collaborated with several bodies of civic importance, like City Colleges of Chicago and Complete College of America, to further drive the impact of OMD in the past 3 years.
In his new role as Teach for America’s CEO, Aneesh Sohoni believes, “the current trajectory of education and learning in our country does not have to define our future,” and says, “I am proud that TFA prioritizes coalition-building with students and communities to achieve a shared vision for a future that is brighter than today.”
