Babson MBA Graduate Takes Uncommon Path to Education Equity

Preshika Jain poses for a photo at the Babson College front gate
Listen

Preshika Jain MBA’21 started teaching the summer she turned 15. The nonprofit residential school, Crayons, was located in a low-income section of Mumbai, India, and Jain taught English, math, and art to 70 girls between the ages of 3 and 15. The experience was formative. “I saw that with even a slight improvement in education,” she said, “they not only benefited but their whole community benefited.”

She enjoyed teaching so much that what was meant to be a summer project turned into a vocation. Jain continued to teach at Crayons every summer for the next six years until she graduated from college. Even afterward, she would return every year to visit the residential school.

Then, one day, it wasn’t there anymore.

“It had just disappeared. I reached out to the community, I reached out to the cops, I tried to find the girls. I got to know from the locals that it had shut down,” Jain said.

Preshika Jain '21 and her students in India
Preshika Jain and some of her students at the school in India where she taught during the summer for four years.

The abrupt shuttering hit her hard, but it also strengthened her resolve to find a business solution to an education problem. Given her interest in teaching, Jain said, “People always ask me, ‘Why a business degree rather than a master’s of education?’ But, I knew that if you don’t have a sustainable business model, the impact you create in education can disappear in a few months.”

That desire led Jain to Babson College and, ultimately, to the Lewis Institute for Social Innovation’s Uncommon Table.

Finding Solutions

In seeking a solution, Jain first began to think about education technology. What if a teacher in a remote location without access to high-quality books could log in to a system with advanced educational materials? What if a student in a financially strapped inner city school could get extra help online?

headshot of Cheryl Kiser
Cheryl Kiser, executive founding director of the Lewis Institute for Social Innovation at Babson College

Jain had been working in tech, leading business development for food and ed tech companies. “But, I was missing my purpose,” she said. “I wanted to upskill myself, to seek financially sustainable solutions to global education challenges, and what better place to do that than at the Lewis Institute?”

Ultimately, she decided to pursue her MBA at Babson College. She had already been in touch with Lewis Institute founding executive director Cheryl Kiser, who, Jain says, “gave wings to my thoughts.”

Kiser also gave Jain a place to develop her ideas.

“Preshika is amazing,” Kiser said. “So engaging, so purposeful, and so full of energy and curiosity. We were talking about what she cared about. I told her we don’t have a speciality in ed tech, but that’s the beauty of the Lewis Institute: If you want to do something that fits with our mission of advancing global education, we can create anything you want.”

Under Kiser’s mentorship, Jain created an Ed Tech Uncommon Table that met once a month, usually with a special guest speaker from the field. “I realized that the world shared a lot of common problems in education, but also scalable solutions to them,” Jain said.

A Booming Field

Through the Uncommon Table, Jain also met Carol Atwood, a Babson Entrepreneur in Residence, who runs the Center for Curriculum Redesign (CCR).

Jain joined CCR and says she was able to put the knowledge gained from her MBA classes and the Uncommon Table into practice by working on an ed tech product. A quality education, Jain says, takes students beyond rote memorization and helps them build strong skills. The ed tech product she worked on is a 4D, web-based tool that helps teachers create lesson plans by prompting them with questions, suggestions, and activities that will encourage students to apply concepts beyond a given application.

For example, a student learning about the Earth’s rotation would be prompted to apply the concept of rotation to other applications, “like how a basketball spins on your finger,” she said. The goal is to “help teachers create impactful lesson plans in a simple way to ensure that students are learning what is meaningful and developing 21st century skills,” including resilience and creativity.

Preshika Jain MBA’21 and Cheryl Kiser
Preshika Jain MBA’21 and Cheryl Kiser

Upon graduating from Babson in December, Jain already has been offered a position in the ed tech industry, which she says “is booming,” but she is still deciding what she wants to do. Her goal is to continue to pursue a role in ed tech using the experience gained through her work at CCR, Babson, and—the source of her inspiration—teaching at the Crayons school in India.

Ed tech “democratizes education,” Kiser says, “by getting tech into the hands of as many people as possible.”

Jain agrees: “I want to continue to learn more and to find solutions that create equity and sustainability in education, so that there is never an occasion that a child does not have access to education or that access is taken away after a time. It is a big dream, but I believe it is possible.”

Posted in Community, Entrepreneurial Leadership

More from Entrepreneurial Leadership »

Latest Stories

Side-by-side photos of the chair and the two students posing for a photo with the chair
From Text Prompt to Furniture: The Story Behind Babson’s AI Dam Chair With groundbreaking artificial intelligences advances, Vaness (Reece) Gardner ’26 and Cole Collins ’26 have created what is believed to be the first full-scale, AI-designed chair on a college campus.
By
Eric Beato
Editor / Writer
Eric Beato
Eric Beato is the Editor of Babson Thought & Action and Babson Magazine. A native of Chicago and a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Eric has worked as an editor and writer at newspapers across the country, including the Chicago Sun-Times and Boston Herald. Eric joined Babson College in 2019 after working as the communications director for a private educational travel company and as the managing editor of six regional sports publications.
May 23, 2025

Posted in Community, Entrepreneurial Leadership, Outcomes

College president shakes hands with a student at the Commencement ceremony
Babson’s Graduates Remember the People Who Inspired Them In the final moments before Commencement, just before marching to the ceremony, Babson’s 2025 graduates reflected on their College journeys and the people who supported and inspired them.
By
John Crawford
Senior Journalist
John Crawford
A writer for Babson Thought & Action and the Babson Magazine, John Crawford has been telling the College’s entrepreneurial story for more than 15 years. Assignments for Babson have taken him from Rwanda to El Salvador, from the sweet-smelling factory of a Pennsylvania candy maker, to the stately Atlanta headquarters of an NFL owner, to the bustling office of a New York City fashion designer. Beyond his work for Babson, he has written articles and essays for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Notre Dame Magazine, The Good Men Project, and other publications. He can be found on Twitter, @crawfordwriter, where he tweets about climate change.
,
Hillary Chabot
Writer
Hillary Chabot
Hillary Chabot is a writer for Babson Thought & Action and Babson Magazine. An award-winning journalist, she is known for her insightful reporting and dedication to detailed storytelling. With a career spanning over two decades, she has covered a wide range of topics, from presidential campaigns and government policy to neighborhood issues and investigative series. As a reporter for The Boston Herald, Hillary earned a reputation for tenacity and integrity. Her work at Babson College fuels her passions—to learn something new every day and conduct thoughtful, empathic interviews. She’s thrilled to be at Babson College, where students, faculty, staff members and classes provide compelling copy daily.
May 22, 2025

Posted in Community

Teddy Sourlis holds a microphone while speaking at an event
LISTEN: Changing the Game: The Mind on Sports In Episode 6 of “From Problems to Possibilities,” two Babson College alumni and an expert in mental health philanthropy discuss how entrepreneurial leaders are making an impact at the intersection of sports and mental health.
By
May 21, 2025

Posted in Entrepreneurial Leadership, Insights