Director of Strategy and Impact
Nature of employment: Full-time
Reporting to: Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Location: Delhi
About Peepul
Peepul is an education-focused non-profit organization committed to transforming India's education system and enabling every child to reach their full potential. We work closely with national, state, and local governments to strengthen government schools and education systems at scale. Currently, we partner with governments in Delhi and Madhya Pradesh, impacting over 6.6 million students, 273,000+ teachers, and 2,400+ school leaders across 90,000+ government schools.
At Peepul, we collaborate with school systems to build the capacity of leaders, teachers, and institutions. We advocate policy improvements, support mentoring and monitoring mechanisms, and enhance student-teacher engagement in classrooms. Through our work, we have directly supported 5.94 million students, 254,000 teachers, and 1,644 school leaders across 88,711 schools in Madhya Pradesh, and 658,000 students, 19,000 teachers, and 821 school leaders across 1,500 schools in Delhi.
Our work has been recognized internationally, including receiving the Commonwealth Education Awards for Innovation and being featured in reports by respected organizations such as the United Nations and the Ministry of Education, Government of India. We are supported by leading Indian CSR partners and prominent international foundations that share our vision of ensuring excellent education for the most disadvantaged children.
Driven by our core values of impact, excellence, and leadership, we are a restless, resilient, and reflective organization. Our team of 200+ employees is passionate about creating lasting change and is rewarded competitively for their dedication. Join us in our mission to create a world where every child has equal access to high-quality education.
Learn more about our transformative work at http://peepulindia.org.
The Opportunity
Peepul exists to prove that high-quality public education at scale is possible. We work alongside state governments, embedding ourselves deep within their systems to shift what actually happens in classrooms — for the children who need it most. Across our programs, we are building something rare: an evidence base that shows government partnerships can be redesigned from the inside.
This role sits at the centre of that work. As Director of Strategy and Impact, you will be the connective tissue between what we aspire to and what we actually deliver — across multiple states, a growing team, and an increasingly complex portfolio. At its heart, this is a role about vertical integration: ensuring that our “Change the School” innovation goals are successfully embedded into the “Run the School” operational realities of government systems. Your primary mandate is to ensure that our programs do not just work, but that they work consistently, efficiently, and at scale — transforming ambitious educational goals into robust, replicable delivery operating systems where rapid expansion never compromises the quality of student outcomes.
You will lead the Centre of Intelligence and the Transformation Office, shape how we measure and communicate our impact, drive operational consistency across state programmes, and help the organisation scale without losing what makes our work effective. You will also be a key voice in strategic decisions, a thought partner to the CEO, and a force for clarity when things get complicated.
This is not a role for someone who wants to sit above the work. It is for someone who wants to be inside it — close to the decisions, close to the data, and genuinely committed to building something that lasts.
Tune in to Kruti Bharucha, our CEO, as she shares insights on Scaling Education Reform Across India in the latest episode of The Impact Equation.
What You Will Own
1. Strategic Leadership and Organisational Alignment
You will be responsible for ensuring that Peepul's strategy holds together — not just on paper, but in practice, across every team and geography. This means translating ambitious goals into workable plans, identifying where drift is happening before it becomes a problem, and making sure that our expansion into new states doesn't come at the cost of what's working.
- Strategic Planning: Lead the design and execution of Peepul's strategic planning process, working closely with the CEO and Executive Team to set priorities and drive accountability.
- New State Expansion: Own the full lifecycle of new state engagements — from early government relationship-building and MOU negotiations through to PMU establishment and operational readiness.
- Bridging Academic and Operations: Serve as the primary bridge between the Chief Academic Officer and State Directors, ensuring that program design is both pedagogically sound and operationally achievable.
- Strategic Discipline: Maintain strategic discipline across the portfolio — flagging when initiatives are drifting from core mission and helping leadership make hard prioritisation decisions.
2. Centre of Intelligence (CoI) — Moving Beyond Monitoring
We are building something more sophisticated than an M&E function. The Centre of Intelligence exists to turn data into decisions — quickly, systematically, and with real consequences for how we operate. You will lead this work, shifting the organisation from compliance-based reporting to genuine learning and course correction.
- Intelligence Over Reporting: Oversee state-level MEL teams to ensure data integrity, real-time insight generation, and genuine accountability for learning outcomes.
- Cross-Geography Learning: Build systems that identify why certain interventions perform better in one context than another — and ensure those insights travel across the organisation.
- Institutionalised Course Correction: Create formal feedback loops between CoI insights and program delivery, institutionalising the habit of learning from both success and failure.
- Stakeholder Advocacy: Synthesise complex impact data into compelling, rigorous narratives for senior government stakeholders, IAS officers, and global donors — including Development Impact Bonds and other results-based financing instruments.
3. Delivery Excellence — Holding the Bar at Scale
Peepul's credibility depends on the consistency of what happens on the ground. As we expand, the risk of quality drift grows. You will lead the Delivery Excellence (Dex) function — building the systems, standards, and culture that ensure our work is as strong in State B as it is in State A.
- Codify the Peepul Way: Own the development and maintenance of the Peepul Playbook — the codified standards that define how programs are designed, delivered, and reviewed.
- Fidelity and Consistency: Establish a regular fidelity audit function that identifies gaps between intended design and field execution and drives systematic improvement.
- Transformation Office: Deploy the Transformation Office as an internal problem-solving function — diagnosing bottlenecks, running targeted sprints, and resolving the kinds of operational challenges that are too complex for state teams to handle alone.
- Risk and Continuity: Proactively identify risks — leadership transitions in government, data lags, implementation gaps — and build protocols that protect program continuity.
4. Stakeholder Relationships and External Engagement
This role requires credibility in rooms that are very different from each other — with government secretaries, academic researchers, field teams, and international donors. You will need to carry the Peepul story with authority and precision in all of them.
- Government Diplomacy: Maintain high-level relationships with State Education Secretaries and senior IAS officers to ensure political alignment and anticipate programme risks.
- Donor Stewardship: Act as the technical lead for complex donor relationships, providing the evidence base and strategic framing that secures and renews major grants.
- Capacity Building: Mentor State Directors and senior PMU staff, building the next tier of leadership across the organisation.
- Internal Integration: Serve as a point of integration between the CAE, Program Operations, and support functions — ensuring the organisation moves together.
5. Technology as an Enabler
Technology should reduce administrative burden, sharpen insight, and extend the reach of our best practices. You will work with the Technology Enablement Lead and the CTO to ensure that digital tools are embedded thoughtfully into how we deliver and learn.
- EdTech Integration: Lead the exploration and piloting of EdTech and AI tools that can meaningfully improve on-ground delivery — from AI-assisted teacher feedback to digital observation tools.
- Data Infrastructure: Drive the development of a management cockpit that gives State Directors and the CEO real-time visibility into program health.
- Efficiency and Scale: Identify manual and repetitive processes across state programs and work to automate them, freeing up field teams for higher-value work.
Where You Sit in the Organisation
This role reports directly to the CEO and sits within Peepul's Executive Leadership Team. You will have a dotted line into all program states and direct line management of the Centre of Intelligence, the Transformation Office, the Technology Enablement Lead, and the New State Projects function. Over the coming 18–24 months, the Technology Enablement Lead will transition to report directly to the CTO as Peepul's technology strategy matures.
The role is genuinely cross-cutting — you will have a hand in academic quality, program operations, donor strategy, government relations, and organisational design. That is both the challenge and the opportunity. This is an organisation-building role as much as it is a functional one.
What we are looking for
- A systems thinker - You see the connection between a single teacher's classroom behaviour and a multi-million-dollar state policy. You are able to move between the detail and the big picture without losing rigour.
- Comfortable with complexity — You do not simplify what is hard or default to what is easy. You stay with the difficult, high-stakes problems, building alignment and momentum across diverse stakeholders.
- Operationally credible - You have a track record of making complex things work in difficult environments. You combine strategic thinking with strong execution, and people trust you to deliver.
- Data-literate and intellectually rigorous - You treat data as a tool for decision-making, not a reporting exercise. You are comfortable working with imperfect data and using it to make sound decisions.
- A connector - You can hold relationships with government secretaries, academic leaders, international donors, and field staff — and you know how to communicate differently in each room without losing consistency.
- Committed to the mission - You are drawn to the complexity of working inside government systems, not put off by it. You understand that change in public education is slow, contested, and worth it.
Qualifications and Role Requirements:
At Peepul, we seek talented professionals passionate about driving educational transformation and making a positive impact. We are looking for individuals who possess the following qualifications and meet the role requirements:
- Educational Background: A Master’s or doctoral degree in Education Policy, Public Policy, Management, or a related field. Equivalent qualification through demonstrated leadership in large-scale public systems will also be considered. What matters is a deep, working understanding of how complex systems are designed, reformed, and held accountable — not just studied.
- Work Experience: 10-15 years of progressive experience, including significant exposure to strategy, systems design, and large-scale programme delivery. A background in management consulting with a social sector or government practice, combined with subsequent on-the-ground implementation experience, is particularly well-suited to this role.
- Other Skills: Outstanding interpersonal skills, leadership, communication and collaborating skills with internal and external stakeholders. Demonstrated ability to influence strategic decisions and adapt quickly to changing environments. Exceptional ability to translate strategic intent into operational systems and hold teams accountable for results. Strong analytical and data-literacy skills — comfortable interrogating evidence, identifying gaps, and making decisions under uncertainty.
- Language Proficiency: English and Hindi
- Compensation: INR 40L-50L per annum. The offer made to selected candidates shall be commensurate with qualifications, experience, and salary history.
How to apply
To apply for a position, please share the below documents to Nitasha.shridhar@peepulindia.org
You will be required to share:
- Your CV: Please ensure that your CV provides relevant information about your professional and personal experience and details of your academic qualifications. CVs can be one to two pages in length.
- A cover letter: We highly encourage you to use your cover letter to showcase your specific interest in working for Peepul and demonstrate how your qualifications align with the role you are applying for. A tailored cover letter holds significant importance in Peepul's recruitment process as it enables us to comprehend your motivations for the position, your relevant skills, and the clarity of your writing.
About Peepul
Peepul is an education non-profit that partners with state governments in India to improve learning outcomes in public schools. We embed experienced teams within government systems, building local capacity while driving measurable change. Our work spans strengthening teaching practice, school systems, and academic support structures — all oriented toward a single goal: better outcomes for children in the schools that need the most support. We are a growing organisation with an ambitious strategy and a strong evidence base.
Join us in our mission to create a world where every child has equal access to high-quality education. Learn more about our transformative work at http://peepulindia.org.
For any further queries related to our hiring process and timelines, please contact us at recruitment@peepulindia.org.