Ali Nilgiriwala - racing champion and journalist in the making
At the FIRST Lego League robotics challenge held in Bangalore in February 2017, the Aga Khan Academy’s team Queso won the Best Project award. Ali, the assistant coach for team Queso, was moved by his team’s hard work and determination. Ali was also the assistant coach for team Maverick as well, and both his teams scored very well. “We were happy that we got a mentor like Ali,” says Alyque Farishta, captain of team Queso. “He is fun, intelligent and also extremely supportive.”
Ali wants to go on to race professionally, but his ambitions don’t end at the chequered flag. His greater ambition is to own a GT3 racing team. “Team management or ownership is the path to stay involved in the industry long term,” he says.
Alisha Sonawalla - pushing the frontiers of technology
Alisha Sonawalla was part of AKA Hyderabad’s first graduating batch, the Class of 2014. Since then, she has accumulated an extraordinary set of experiences during a gap year and subsequently at university in New York City before joining Microsoft in Seattle this summer (2019). These experiences range from heading projects geared at exposing girls in rural India to coding and internet technologies, to designing English language development programmes in Tajikistan, and most recently, to spending summers in Silicon Valley working on self-driving cars.
Alisha is currently working as a software engineer at Microsoft (Seattle) after pursuing a dual degree – B.S. in Computer Science (from NYU Courant) and B.S. in Management Science with a concentration in Data Science (from NYU Stern School of Business). She has received the Dean’s Honour Roll for securing a Grade Point Average in the top 10% of the class. Outside the classroom, she has dabbled in multiple projects including building her own robo news-reader, and experimenting with developing a secure cloud sharing service.
“The Academy helped me become comfortable with making mistakes and encouraged me to focus on identifying solutions instead,” explains Alisha. “That, and my gap year experiences ignited in me a passion for tech and an entrepreneurial spirit, and ever since, I have been excited about building products to push the frontiers of technology forward.”
Copyright - GM/HondaAlisha’s internships at university have provided her with unparalleled opportunities to deepen her technical knowledge. In 2017, she did an internship at IBM, where she worked with machine learning algorithms to develop a predictive model that would help IBM use unstructured data to forecast revenues for subsequent quarters. And then last summer, she engaged with cutting-edge technologies as a software engineer on General Motors and Honda’s joint autonomous car venture, Cruise Automation. “It was an exciting time to be in in the Mecca of tech,” she reminisces. “I led the development of a large-scale mapping service to deliver real-time, preemptive updates to the vehicle, allowing them to make more efficient routing decisions and enhanced ride safety. As one of the early engineers in the self-driving car space, it was amazing to have the opportunity to contribute towards the future of tech.” Copyright - Agastya Int'l FoundationAlisha’s technological accomplishments of the past and plans for the future are marked by a social dimension. Her work with Agastya International Foundation, the world’s largest hands-on science program, took her to a small, rural village in Southern India, and involved designing a programme based on Google Bus and Raspberry Pi devices. The programme encouraged 900 students to combine scientific concepts with technology to find a solution to a local issue, such as soil contamination or crop infestation. “The girls’ newfound confidence became my motivation as I travelled across India and to Tajikistan conducting sessions for women on STEM opportunities,” shares Alisha. She was also one of 25 female engineers globally who was awarded the Goldman Sachs Grace Hopper Conference Scholarship to attend the Grace Hopper Conference, the largest conference for woman in tech.
In 2013, while still at AKA Hyderabad, Alisha travelled across four remote villages of Gujarat to document the livelihood and survival strategies of a lost community, the Devipujaks. Her interviews and field research was compiled into one of the only ethnographic studies done on this marginalized group of people, and she presented her findings at the National Conference on Human Rights organised by the Central University of Gujarat and the Government of India.
“I do see myself returning to India at some point,” Alisha states. “I see a lot of potential for innovation in bringing the next billion users online, and I want to be a part of this tech revolution. With a growing population, the lack of an educated workforce could create the biggest hindrance to economic prosperity and therefore it is essential to focus resources on education. Once the workforce is educated, it will be important to open up avenues of employment. Though we have seen smart phones and access to cheap internet become commonplace in India, there are still large pockets of the country that can benefit from access to better technology infrastructure. This would allow more home-grown startups to flourish, and enhance the ease of doing business in India for foreign companies for whom the 1.3 billion consumer base is extremely attractive." In the meantime, Alisha is joining Microsoft as a software engineer on their AI & Mixed Reality team. Alisha credits AKA Hyderabad with helping refine her value system. “The Academy gave me the space to develop my moral compass by taking on leadership opportunities and experiencing ethical dilemmas first-hand. Being faced with these ethical decisions on a small scale helped me develop a moral compass that guides me through major decisions even today. Moreover, living in a shared space taught me to adapt to different situations, lifestyles and people, which made my transition to NYU, a new city and a different culture seamless.”
Written by Kamini Menon
Anahita Aman: Grateful for the Academy’s holistic approach to learning and development
Anahita Aman is in her seventh year at the Aga Khan Academy in Hyderabad. Having started there in grade 5, she is now a grade 11 student in the Diploma Programme. She is wise beyond her years and yet has a youthfulness that is contagious. She is full of hopes and dreams and strives to get the most out of her days at the Academy so that she can ultimately give back to the community and society at large.
For Anahita, the strongest part of the Academy is its holistic approach to student development. “They don’t just focus on the academics but also on sports, music and art – so in that way it’s a really holistic approach to learning, and it’s helped me develop into a multidimensional and multifaceted person,” Anahita says. This holistic approach means that she gets the freedom to explore her passions, and that excites her. She loves music – whether it be singing, playing the keyboard and tabla, or learning Indian dance. She is also a self-proclaimed feminist who is passionate about gender-based violence, gender equality and education for girls. She recently had the chance to fuse these two passions as part of a personal project requirement at school. She wrote, composed, and performed her own songs with powerful messages on these topics.
This year, Anahita made a shift to the residential programme and says that it has been a great learning experience – one that has forced her to come out of her shell. She has learned how to better manage herself and her time, and she has become more independent and more social. “I learned how to adapt to my surroundings, how to adjust with other people and to make things work.” But Anahita feels that she has grown in other ways also, and this stems again from the holistic approach of the Academies.
“Service and action is mandatory as a part of the curriculum…they emphasise the need for community awareness, for concern about society, and they emphasise the need to give back and to make positive and effective contributions to society.” For the service and action component of the Academy’s programme, Anahita was part of fundraising teams that raised money for nearby government schools to install water filtration systems and purchase sports equipment, among other things. “We don’t look at it as an obligation or a compulsion but we do it out of passion, and the Academy gives us that passion, that feeling or need to give back to society,” Anahita says. She is proud of her service accomplishment along with many others that the Academy has also helped her to achieve.
She is a member of the journalism club and has made great strides in her writing skills, including how to better articulate her thoughts. She has taken part in a national sports tournament where she represented her school in football and track and field, having won a silver in high jump. And she has been part of the Model United Nations where she not only got a real sense of how the world works, including how people live and what the prevalent issues are, but also developed skills in public speaking, problem solving and knowledge application. Anahita says, “The Academy helps us apply this knowledge to real-life situations.”
The holistic approach to learning and development that the Academy takes is something that Anahita believes makes it unique. But there are other things too. For one, there is no spoon-feeding. Instead, you’re taught how to learn and how to learn on your own – the approach is not one of rote learning but rather application of real-life situations. She’s also really happy that the Academy creates a safe space. “We have that sense of comfort that there’s no pressure of performing and we have the space to experiment with things. We don’t feel pressure at any point, we don’t feel stressed, and we don’t look at exams as huge challenges but as small barriers that we can overcome.”
Anahita also believes that the Academy’s mission and vision are both important and inspiring. In fact, it was the mission that attracted her parents to send her there. “It teaches us to be culturally rooted and diverse. It teaches us how to accept our differences and so we have this feeling of community,” says Anahita. The Academy also aligns within the framework of the International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes. As such, the attributes of its learner profile are very powerful in instilling life values. All of this is what she believes make it distinct from many other schools.
Anahita credits the Academy for helping her become less shy and less self-conscious. She says, “I feel like I have the comfort to be who I am and to express myself freely. I feel acknowledged and I feel I’m being appreciated for who I am.” When asked if there was any particular person at the Academy that played a big part in this, or whether there was someone she really looks up to, she says that she doesn’t account only one person as a role model but instead looks to the many amazing people she has met along the way for their different but equally important attributes. “I may like someone’s enthusiasm, someone’s hard work and dedication, the way they work with people, the way they bring people together,” Anahita says. “I like to get inspired by these characteristics, by these attributes from different people and imbibe them into myself to be the best person I can be.”
Anahita’s future looks bright. While she is still unsure of what exactly she wants to do, she has learned how to articulate her passion, and that in itself has given her a sense of determination. She hopes to be able to combine her interests in music and literature with humanities and gender studies. She imagines perhaps becoming a poet or musician and incorporating important messages into her work. “I think the Academy is giving me the space and the platform to explore what I’m actually interested in,” Anahita says, “and I think that will lead me to my ultimate ambition.”
By Ceisin Popat
Aman eyes Asian glory after twin national gold in cycling
Alyssa Shakes Hands with the President
Parent Presentation - Nairobi
Cultural Week - Programme
Student-led Information Session
Parent Teacher Conferences
