Outstanding Achievement in Education Leadership Award 2017
Jayashree Mohta
Citation
An alumna of Loreto House, Kolkata, Jayashree Mohta is chairperson of the Sarala Birla Group of nine schools, all of them highly ranked in the latest EWISR 2017-18. Jayashree became actively involved in managing the schools promoted by her parents Basant Kumar Birla, youngest son of legendary businessman-philanthropist G.D. Birla and incumbent chairman of Century Spinning and Kesoram Industries, and the late Sarala Birla, in 1980. Over the past 35 years under her stewardship all nine schools, with an aggregate enrolment of 16,000 students, have developed and matured into the country’s top-ranked K-12 institutions nationally reputed for offering contemporary world-class education rooted in Indian heritage and values.
The group’s flagship Birla Vidya Mandir, Nainital is ranked India’s #6 boys boarding school and B.K. Birla Centre for Education, Pune is ranked Maharashtra’s #1 boys boarding school in the latest EW India School Rankings 2017-18. Moreover she has strategised and engineered the promotion of several greenfield schools such as the Sarala Birla Gyan Jyoti, Guwahati (estb.2004), Birla Divya Jyoti, Siliguri (estb.2008) and the Sarala Birla Public School, Ranchi (estb.2009) in neglected tier II and III cities.
Similarly as chairperson of Birla Global University, Bhubaneshwar and BIMTECH (Birla Institute of Management & Technology), Greater Noida, Jayashree has led BIMTECH’s transformation into one of the country’s top business management education institutions. A patron of Indian art and culture, Jayashree is also chairperson of the Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata, a state-of-the-art gallery displaying works of ancient and contemporary Indian art and is proactively involved in several rural projects such as construction of toilets, tube-wells, schools, medical dispensaries and provision of livelihood training.
For her extraordinary contribution to the growth and development of primary-secondary education, particularly for enabling the promotion of globally-benchmarked education institutions in neglected tier II and III cities of India, and for her commitment to delivering contemporary K-12 education rooted in Indian values and traditions, the Board of Directors and Editors of EducationWorld are proud to present Jayashree Mohta the EW Outstanding Achievement in Education Leadership Award 2017 and induct her into the EW Hall of Fame of Indian Education.
