Shanaz Chowdhery

About Me

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.

Education

Yale University: I majored in sociology, with a specific focus on pathways of American inequality including the sub-cultures of gangs and policing, social control, and social stratification. Like most sociologists, I believe that education is the most powerful vehicle of economic mobility. My senior thesis explored how participation in the college internship market is mediated by social capital and access to financial resources. I became the first in my entire extended family to earn a Bachelor's degree when I graduated with honors.

University of Oslo: I explored Nordic exceptionalism and gender equality, with a particular focus on Norwegian gender equalization policies regarding childcare.

Johns Hopkins University: I studied effective practices for teaching and learning in general education environments, classroom management techniques for general and special education environments, and transformational leadership in teaching to drive student success. When I withdrew, I was halfway through completion in earning a Master's of Science in Education with a 4.0 GPA.