- Everyone, I'm Sam Clark with Crimson Education,
and I'm very excited today than
in our Crimson Experts Interview Series.
I am speaking with Anjali Bhatia,
who is the director of North America
for Crimson Education, Anjali welcome.
- Hi thanks so much for having me.
I'm so excited to be on.
- Absolutely thank you for joining us to kick off,
just tell our viewers a little bit about yourself,
your background and what brought you
into the education space.
- Amazing, so I grew up in New Jersey,
a suburb of New York city.
And when I was in high school,
I had a pretty transforming moment
where I was in a cab in New York city
and the cab driver was a refugee from Sudan.
This was back in the early 2000s.
And I was actually pretty shocked
when he started explaining to me what he had gone through.
And I realized then that in my high school,
we did all these volunteer hours,
but we were very rarely connected to actual social causes.
So I started this whole initiative
for social entrepreneurship for high school students,
worked on that a lot in high school
that led me to going to Duke
where I was on the Robertson scholarship,
kept working on educational products around this.
And so when I graduated, I worked more in education,
went back to do my MBA at Wharton.
And then I was really looking for
how I could impact a lot of students live here
in the US and even globally.
So I learned about Crimson and you know,
how we approach building leadership within students,
helping them foster their own social justice causes
or businesses or nonprofits,
and really put themselves in their best position
to do well in college or even in their first careers.
And it was really the perfect match for me.
So now I'm based on the West Coast
and I've been with Crimson for a few years now.
- Absolutely, and you talk to a lot
of students every single day with Crimson.
What are, what is the first sort of hangup or hurdle
that you hear about from students who are looking
to develop a leadership opportunity from themselves?
'Cause it can definitely be a little daunting at first.
- Yes, okay, so first of all,
you hit on my favorite part of this job in this company.
I get to meet awesome people all the time.
I think, you know, the first conversations are not really
about the huge initiative you want to create.
We just start off chatting with you, you know,
like what's a cause that's caught your interest recently,
you know, talking about something
like your lifelong passion,
that's challenging even for adults.
So we just want to kind of understand you
what you're inspired by, where you'd be interested
to spend your time.
Ultimately, we wanna help you think of a plan
where you're spending your time on activities
that give you energy versus feeling
like another thing you have to do.
So I'd say that's generally where we start off.
And then over the time that you work with Crimson,
we'll help you identify,
you know, something you care about
and what are the right skills you wanna build
to get there too.
So even if you just love Instagram, hey, you know, what,
that's a useful skill.
You can use Instagram to raise awareness on the cause.
So it's very student by student,
but it kind of just starts from that very beginning
of, you know, things that have caught your interest.
- So you're not starting from a standpoint of leadership
for leadership sake, right?
It's more about, what's a cause that matters
to you and potentially sort of leadership
will build from that as you develop your approach
to that cause, that sort of thing.
- Exactly, and, you know, we do talk a lot with our students
about just like foundational skills.
So when students are starting younger with us,
but they're in middle school, ninth grade, 10th grade,
we can actually run you through best practices.
The things like time management,
knowing what's a technique for how to study the right way.
So you're saving time.
So we'll run you through those topics.
But a lot of people, you know,
you're facing similar issues.
You maybe have a peer in a group project
who doesn't get their work done.
So how do you handle that in a really graceful way?
That's empathetic, so those are the kinds
of conversations we can help you with.
And then for more older students or advanced students,
that's where we can
really help you think through step by step.
What's an awesome passion project.
We call it a capstone.
Some people call it a spike.
You know, if you were thinking of doing
something like a huge virtual hackathon,
there's so many things you need to think of.
And we have so much experience with that with students
that we can help you come up with that list,
that roadmap, that full plan.
- So now is obviously a very unique time
for students around the world, right?
They're in various different versions
of either staying at home, online learning, hybrid learning.
What advice would you have for a student looking
to build an initiative around a cause
that they're excited about
when they are potentially stuck at home,
only interfacing with their peers via Zoom or text?
What advice do you have like sort
of for this moment now trying to act
on those sorts of passions?
- So I say one of the biggest limitations
of being online during COVID is that it's hard to shadow
or learn from people who may be in the field
that you're interested in or in the case of wanting
to help a cause let's say homelessness, I mean you can't go
to the shelter right now.
It's a huge risk for everyone.
So still trying to make those opportunities to learn
from people who are on the ground is super critical.
So I would say, a lot of people want
to do something about homelessness,
but they don't spend that time to learn what's being done
or we're the organizations actually need help.
So when you listen to them,
you can come up with a lot of good ideas.
So we have a student
who really was passionate about volunteering
in nursing homes set up a club within her high school,
around nursing homes when she came to us
as a sophomore oh sorry,
as a junior actually in her second semester.
And we decided to, we're gonna expand this club.
We're gonna have more students really get out there
and volunteer at nursing homes.
COVID has, none of us can go to nursing homes.
It's too much of a risk for the patients.
So she really adapted quite well.
So she talked quite a lot with the director
of activities at a nursing home
and heard a bit more about the difficulties
when it comes to planning events right now,
how people are engaging.
And she designed a whole nonprofit initiative
where she has a kind of that these directors
of engagement at nursing homes set up
one-on-one Zoom interviews kind of like we're doing now.
And she transcribed those stories of course,
with their permission.
And has put it all on one website.
So people can go and browse through the stories
and learn from our elderly.
And it's a pretty powerful way
that she's able to connect with the elderly,
but also give back and allow people see
what an amazing experience that is
and one how they can give back
and also how they can learn from stories of others.
- That's fantastic, and when you sort of reach the end
of a process with a student,
when they've been spending years,
even on a project like that,
or sort of a more recent iteration of that,
in that students case, what is your advice when it comes
to sort of the very, very difficult task
of concentrating all of that work
and all of that passion into something
that's say a college admissions officer would be reading
and in essays or in various forms?
What's, obviously a lot to answer in one question,
but what's your advice for initially approaching it?
- Yeah, so the biggest thing I noticed with high schoolers
is that a lot of times,
people put more emphasis on title than they do impact.
So they'll say, "Hey I'm the president of this."
Its like admissions officer is the president
of all the clubs applying especially for these top schools.
So I would say think about what that leadership title
is going to allow you to do,
and how you can quantify that impact.
And be really deliberate and thoughtful from the beginning,
you know, get buy in from your team, have a plan,
especially if your meetings are virtual,
make sure that people are staying on top of it by, you know,
sending out notes afterwards clear action items,
I think a lot of virtual leadership at this point
is project management.
So learn the best practices of that.
And then that way, when you're actually translating it
to your application, you're gonna be able to talk
about those numbers, and you don't get a lot of space
when it comes to extracurriculars.
So on the common app, you get thoughts
for 10 extracurriculars.
So you're probably right now like,
Oh, my God, I'm not in 10 clubs.
These include all your summer activities,
any job you've had, you know,
if you're scooping ice cream, any internship.
So you kind of get these 10 spots,
usually they fill up, you can even talk
about things like guitar at home, you know, it doesn't need
to be a formal school club.
And then you get a limited amount of characters too,
so the more you can talk about,
like the actual different you've made,
then it's pretty solid.
Essays gives you a bit more of a chance
to let your personality shine.
So I would say pick a story.
You know, that moment that transformed you
and talk about that versus turning that
into another resume opportunity.
So yeah, I think those are my big two things I'd advice,
you know, have really clear measurable impact as a leader.
And then really, when you're coming
to the essay portion of it,
turn it into a story that lets them know about you.
So you have both that quantitative and qualitative portions
of you that are coming across.
- Yeah, anything else before we wrap up?
I would say, college admissions feels really scary,
especially in this like strange, COVID world.
But just know that it's like
this very rare moment to self-reflect.
So try and see the light in that
because you can take that time
to think about what's changed you who you want to be,
even when it comes to college.
So definitely make the most of that time
and that thought process as well.
And yeah, we're definitely here to help you.
If you want to chat with me or anyone on my team,
then you can kind of go through the process
of signing up for a chat with us.
And we love having these conversations,
you know, what are your strengths?
What are your goals?
How can we bridge that we can come up with a plan for you,
or send you Crimson resources that would be helpful.
So it's definitely win-win to chat with us.
- Amazing and that's actually a perfect note
to wrap up on in which I will say please like this video,
subscribe to Crimson Education if you want
to watch more of our videos.
And if you clink, ooh excuse me,
if you click the link in the description below,
you can actually connect up with someone like Anjali
or a member of her team or a member
of many of the other Crimson teams all around the world
to have exactly that sort of chat
to get you going towards the school of your dreams.
Thank you so much, Anjali, and have a good one.
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