Khushboo Kumari

I have more than 8 years of experience in the development sector, with my career journey deeply rooted in India before coming to the United States. I am a graduate in English language and literature, and to continue my journey in the development sector, I completed a prestigious two-year residential fellowship called Gandhi Fellowship, run by Piramal Education Leadership Institute, where I got exposed to ground-level work and brought solutions as projects. I also have a 6-month diploma in governance and strategy. Currently, I am based in Washington, D.C., working with American Red Cross as part of the Atlas Corps Fellowship sponsored by American India Foundation. In my role with the International Service Department, I coordinate across teams in 181 countries, implementing a program called Way of Working. I work with Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Caribbean teams to understand their ground insights and challenges in order to make the next round of strategy. I also build learning modules on the concept of rubrics, breaking down the tools and concepts into smaller learning modules that are uploaded to our internal knowledge platform called EDGE, which employees across Red Cross use as resources for their work. One of my most significant achievements is Project Sampoorna, where I advocated for social-emotional learning curriculum to be integrated into government school curriculum in Jharkhand, India. This was important because in India there is much more focus on academics, not on how students are thriving socially and emotionally. We did a government partnership with Government of Jharkhand, building on the Happiness Curriculum we had already implemented with Delhi government, and we collaborated with Brookings Institution for research. I was part of this project from the initial day, from partnership and MOU signing to pitching the program, running it, making a monitoring framework, and creating strategic partnership frameworks. Now this program is running in 24 districts of Jharkhand, which is my hometown and a tribal state of India, benefiting millions of students. I always take pride in working on this particular project. I have also been selected for the Atlas Corps Virtual Leadership Platform, a 3-month global leadership program where 30 young professionals from across the world participate. Outside of work, I love traveling and understanding local cultures. In India, through my work, I have covered more than 17 states, and during my year in the U.S., I have visited New York, Boston, and California, including San Francisco, San Jose, and Santa Cruz, where I try to understand the local culture by talking with people, trying food, and experiencing what it is like to stay in these places as a local, not just as a tourist.