Shanaz Chowdhery

I firmly believe that education is the strongest vehicle of economic mobility, having experienced its transformative power firsthand as the first member in my entire family to attend college. After graduating from Yale, I became a Teach For America corps member and taught 5th and 7th-grade math in Ward 8 of Washington, DC. From 2015 to 2018, I served as the Regional Director for General Assembly in Washington, DC, empowering thousands of students to pursue the work they love through practical skills-based education. I strategized for scale and expansion while overseeing daily operations: marketing, admissions, classroom experience, instructional quality, and student outcomes. Prior to becoming the Regional Director, I worked as an Admissions Producer and Admissions Manager and obsessed over building empathetic consultative sales teams, optimizing sales funnels, and finding sales operations efficiencies. In 2018, I left General Assembly to join Vemo Education as a General Manager. I work with non-traditional education institutions to develop and oversee Income Share Agreement programs that help increase enrollment, equalize access to education, and align incentives between schools and students. In 2019, I was promoted to Chief of Staff. I work alongside the Vemo team to identify + execute strategic initiatives and oversee the operational rhythm of the business. When I'm not obsessing about income share agreements, you can find me working to close the digital divide as a Board Member at Byte Back and working to promote economic mobility via the Volunteer Leadership Board for Streetwise Partners.