For more than a hundred years our methods of learning have been two sided - on one side is the teacher who imparts it and on the other is the student who receives it. What this doesn’t account for is the application of learning, the context in which the learnings are applied in the world.
Our mission is to bring context to learning. We do this through our unique pedagogy, inspired by the principles of experiential learning.
We keep human beings at the center of our process.
We value inquiry based thinking.
We help you apply your learning to the real world.
After graduating with my Masters degree in engineering, I wanted to use my education for creating meaningful solutions in the world. So I quit my corporate job on first day and took off to Mozambique, Africa. Next 5 months, I spent working on the ground in a rural hospital.
Despite 6 years of engineering, I found myself ill-prepared to translate my classroom knowledge into skills for real world problem solving. To fill this gap and bring our education closer to the challenges of our world today, we launched Ycenter.
Our team’s combined experience in engineering, business, design thinking and international development allowed us to craft a learning pedagogy and high impact programs for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Creativity. From being awarded an exceptional VISA from US government for extra-ordinary work in this field to being a reputed economist in African continent to dynamic founder of a non-profit media company, we have a diverse team based out of USA, India and Kenya.
Keyur Shah is the Chief Strategy Officer and President at Ycenter.He is a strategic thinker with a 20+ years of Management Consulting career spanning PricewaterhouseCoopers and Citigroup. His primary focus is to grow and scale Ycenter's operations and learning experiences globally. He is also a volunteer and Trustee for an international NGO - Vibha with a focus on educating and empowering children in low income communities. He is inspired by Dalai Lama and follows the Vipassana technique of meditation. Keyur strongly believes that just like meditation - real world learning can be done best, only at the experiential level!
Mike McCoy is the Blockchain Education Lead at Ycenter. He is a blockchain evangelist working on numerous blockchain projects for social good around the world. Previously with ConsenSys, Mike worked in developing blockchain startups through strategic growth, community engagement and market intel capacities. He is passionate to bring thought leaders, development experts, governance, financial and legal minds together to show people how to grow this environment into an inclusive network for all. Originally from Philadelphia, Mike is active in the sports community as an athlete and a fan. He loves to be able to exercise his mind along with his physical attributes, while coaching others and teaching them how to better themselves through sports. He is an avid traveler and loves to experience everything in the world once. If he loves it, he will do it twice!
Manshi Dubey is the Full Stack Developer at Ycenter. She is part of the core team that built the EPIC learning platform and her expertise covers the full spectrum of product development - frontend design, backend and interfaces. She specializes in designing, developing and maintaining the UI / UX, making it more human-friendly. In love with minimal designs and filming stories, she also dons the hat of a Photographer + Lead Developer at ProjectOne, a non-profit collective that celebrates human diversity, which she helped co-found. She quit her job at a corporate MNC to work on projects she believes in.
Kiringai Kamau is the Founding Executive Director for Ycenter Africa based out of Nairobi, Kenya. Kiringai is an Agricultural Economist, Value Chains Analyst, a Knowledge Specialist and an ICT4Ag/ICT4D Enthusiast. He is retained by growing number of organizations including the EU/GIZ Transformation Program to advise the Kenya government on the strategic directions of reforming the agricultural sector in Kenya. His area of research is trade intensification through producer driven value chain organizations. He founded VACID Africa as a community sustainable agribusiness innovation promotion initiative that promotes knowledge in the areas of Value Addition and Cottage Industry Development (VACID). This he achieves through collaboration with communities and local champion organizations. His work identifies champion organizations as local agricultural initiatives that are lead by an individual whom VACID Africa further trains to become knowledge workers in their area through our Community Experiential Learning Program.
Dr. Reeta Shah is the Executive Director at Ycenter India. She is a Chartered Accountant (32nd rank in India at final CA), Ph.D. in Finance from SJMSOM, IIT Bombay, a Law graduate and holder of triple masters’ degree [M.COM., MBA (HRM) AND M. PHIL ]. She has wide experience in Education and training for last 27 years in the areas of finance and transformation and has trained and helped over 30000 people across India. She has conducted training sessions for 20+ corporates and organizations including CRISIL, SOCIETE GENERAL, LIC of India, IIT Bombay & Delhi, IIM Indore, ICAI (across various locations in India) and many more. Her flagship training program Superwoman Unleashed empowers women, where as SuperYou Unleashed empowers MSME business owners and SuperAchiever Unleashed empowers the youth to grow in the personal life and professional career. She is an Independent Director at Shemaroo Entertainment Ltd. She is recipient of outstanding research paper award at a conference at IICM and also her research paper got selected at International Conference at Harvard.
We work with organisations from all over the world.