Advisory Board

The school’s advisory board comprises experts who have volunteered to lend their skills, guidance, and knowledge to help the school grow and successfully pursue its mission. These experts are drawn from various fields and shall support the school in its mission, provide guidance and expertise and serve as our mentors.

Bina Patel

  • Bina Patel retired as an Associate Professor, ECE from Northampton Community College (NCC) Bethlehem, PA 18020 USA. Bina has worked in the field of Early Childhood Education for over 35 years - as a teacher in daycare centres, preschools, kindergartens, and campus lab schools, and as a professor at Community College.
  • Her personal teaching philosophy is drawn from the work of Montessori, Piaget, Vygotsky, Maslow, Bronfenbrenner, Gardener, and Dewey, as well as Reggio Emilia.
  • NCC, both the lab school and the ECE program followed the Art As a Way of Learning (AWL) philosophy. This is structured around the languages of learning, i.e, Language and Literacy, Visual Arts, Music and Movement, and Mathematics and Science. Bina added subjects like Observation and Assessment, Child Development, Society and the Child.
  • The program was accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) and was offered both in-person and online. Bina was instrumental in developing 6 of the courses online and taught both online and in-person sections.
  • She infused cultural and linguistic diversity in every course, to prepare students in supporting children from all walks of life. Inclusion was embedded in every course and students were expected to create lesson plans with strategies for inclusion, based on the student population in the class where they did their labs/ fieldwork.
  • Bina firmly believes each child deserves an environment - physical, social, and temporal - that supports her/his learning. Strategies of inclusion allow this to hold true for each child. As a lifelong learner, she continues to stay in touch with the current trends in ECE through reading about current research and partnering with her colleagues in the US and India during her yearly visits - by giving in-service talks at local schools and at the Human Development and Family Studies dept at Faculty of Family and Community Sciences, MS University, Baroda.

Dr. Lopa Dalal

  • Dr. Lopa Dalal is a Consultant Paediatrician at Sangopan Advanced Children’s Hospital (SACH), Anand & Developmental Paediatrician at the Child Development Centre, SACH, Anand. She worked as an Assistant Professor of Paediatrics, at Vadodara Medical College & SSG Hospital, Vadodara and as an Associate Professor of Paediatrics, at PSMC and SKH, Karamsad. Dr Lopa an MD in Paediatrics also holds a PG Diploma in Developmental Neurology (PGDDN) (Kerala University). Her keen interest in helping children with special needs led her to complete a certificate course in Autism Intervention. Her areas of interest are Developmental, Behavioural and Mental Health issues Paediatric Epilepsy and Parent Coaching.
  • She is also a Volunteer at the “Parenting for Peace” movement and conducts awareness and training programs on Parenting, Media Literacy, Suicide Prevention, and Childhood Nutrition.

Mansi Shah

  • Mansi Shah is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Planning at CEPT University, where she teaches in the Bachelor of Urban Design programme. Her areas of interest encompass landscape design, ecology, food urbanism, and mapping. She has organised several studios related to these subjects, such as “Eco Warriors [Edible to Productive Urbanism]” and “Rebel Bodies Rebel Cities.”
  • She has a keen interest in pedagogy and research. She has carried out several publications, workshops (‘Common Voids, 2016’, ‘Sustainable Living Practicum: Rainforest farming edition 2015’), and exhibitions (‘Chowk Networks 2016- Ahmedabad’, ‘Feral City 2015- NID’, ‘Japan Foundation-Delhi’, ‘Yokohama Civic Art Gallery- Japan’, Prathaa 2012, CEPT University, Beyond Green 2010- Salone del Mobile) to explore innovative ways to support her research and learning for students.
  • With teaching, she works on her independent research projects on different subjects under ‘Productive Urbanism Collective’ (a research collaborative focused on urban landscapes as productive and performative spaces), ‘Ahmedabad Mapping Project’ (an initiative to gather information about the city and represent it through maps and cartography), ‘City Water Walks’ (a project to understand how the urban commons function and how are they are affected by constant changes in governance and development) and ‘Pocket-garden’.
  • Her recent book is ‘Rebel Bodies Rebel Cities’ co-authored with Victor Cano-Ciborro, published by CEPT University Press in 2022. It is a teaching and research project that examines the complexities of urban public spaces and the importance of acknowledging competing stakeholder interests to create more inclusive and equitable environments. She has also co-authored the book ‘Prathaa: Kath-khuni Architecture of Himachal Pradesh’ as a senior researcher at Design Innovation and Craft Resource Centre, DICRC. The research project was also recognised by the International Zumtobel Group Awards 2012 in the Research and Special Initiatives category with honourable mention.

Vrinda Kadiyali

  • Vrinda Kadiyali is the Nicholas H. Noyes Professor of Management and professor of Marketing and Economics at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University, USA.
  • She studies questions at the intersection of managerial and policy relevance. She is a third-generation educator, with a deep interest in her students’ learning. She has previously served as associate dean of faculty and research and director of the PhD programme and on editorial boards of leading journals in her field.

Chitra Kumar

  • Chitra Kumar is an environmental policy and planning expert. Throughout her career, she has held various roles leading diverse teams to improve environmental and social conditions.
  • She is currently the Managing Director of the Climate & Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a United States-based nongovernmental organization founded more than 50 years ago by scientists and students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There she helps develop solutions, educates the public and advocates for a healthy, safe, and just future in the face of climate change.
  • Previously, Ms. Kumar had a 20+ year career with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and served at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Ms. Kumar holds a master’s degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a BA in international Policy for environment and negotiation from Boston University.