Team

Headways ELC has been started by two working mothers, who quit their promising corporate jobs to start their own venture. The idea came up when they themselves struggled for a quality child care and preschool at one place for their toddlers, which should also be in proximity to their working locations and home. With common interest and belief in quality early childhood care and education also backed by the extensive market research findings on availability of quality child care and education in nearby areas. Headways came into being with an aim to be a One stop solution for Childcare and education for working parents and where children progress towards a brighter, healthy and happy future.

Team:

Pooja Desai

Pooja, is the Co-founder and Director at Headways ELC, where children are encouraged to explore, learn and think for themselves. She quit her promising corporate career to start Headways. Pooja believes in the fact that Children learn best when they are allowed to learn in stimulating and enriched environment in the presence of warm and nurturing adults, this interactive relationship with the adult and the environment enhances the brain development of the child.

At Headways Pooja is responsible for managing operations, building a team of passionate professionals who work towards a common goal of providing High quality care and creating a learning and engaging environment for children.

If Pooja is not at School with the children then she likes to spend time with her five year old adorable boy, other than that Pooja likes to paint, travel, read.

Pooja is an MBA in Human Resource Management and a Psychology Graduate. Pooja has worked with both National and Multinational companies and along with that has always pursued her passion for education and care in the early childhood care and education field. Pooja is an Educationist with a desire to provide best in Education and Childcare and aims to make Headways a Progressive Institute.

Ruchi Gupta

A self-starter by nature, Ruchi is the Co-founder and Director at Headways ELC. She is an MBA in Finance

and has worked in various organisations in operations, Finance and team management roles.

Ruchi is an ardent proponent of moving beyond the traditional “one size fits all” approach to

education and is working actively to develop a learning environment at Headways ELC that prepares

children for the ever changing and interconnected world.

Her schooling at Welham Girls- Dehradun, has instilled in her the discipline of being independent,

which she has further passed on to her daughter. Lack of credible options for Child Care and early

childhood education around, motivated her to start Headways ELC.

Ruchi feels that Children’s education is a field that requires a very high level of empathy,

perseverance and determination and is fully committed to it. Through Headways, she wants to be

the facilitator, who prepares the children for a lifelong learning process and develop today’s child

into tomorrow’s “Socially Empathetic”, “Emotionally Secure”, “Intellectually Curious” and “Self-

confident” individual.

Archana Jamdar

Academics and Head of Pedagogy
Archana heads the academics and Pedagogy at Headways. A postgraduate in Child Development, Archana Jamdar has 25+ years of specialized experience in Early Childhood Care & Development. She has also received a B.Ed from Lady Irwin College, Delhi.

Archana has been fortunate through her career in getting exposure such as attending global conferences; workshops and a prestigious internationally recognized certification from CACHE (Council for Awards in Children’s care and Education) from the United Kingdom.Archana was Head of Teacher Training in AryaVidyaMandir for six years and was instrumental in developing the syllabus and pedagogy for the one year Diploma in ECCEd Subsequently, as Head of Academics at Zee Interactive Learning Systems, Archana had the opportunity to work through a network of Regional Academic Coordinators and Franchisee Heads to ensure scaling and consistency of pre-school curriculum across 500 preschool centers.

In 2008, Archana joined Edvance Pre Schools Pvt. Ltd. as Head of Pedagogy and Teacher Training, a start up venture developed in collaboration with Eton House of Singapore: Asia’s largest chain of preschools.

Archana worked closely with senior Eton House professionals from Singapore and the Edvance Management team to transfer and contextualize the Eton House approach to early years. She was instrumental in setting up Vivero International and Serra International Pre schools, across Maharashtra and South India.