Opportunity for Every Student

The Intellectual Contribution Award recognizes graduating Ed.M. students (two from each master’s degree program) whose dedication to scholarship enhanced HGSE’s academic community and positively affected fellow students. All recipients were nominated by their classmates based on who inspired them, helped them gain a different perspective on education's challenges, and contributed to shared learning and intellectual growth, both inside and outside of the classroom. Each program's faculty directors, in consultation with other faculty and staff, selected the final honorees for their program based on the nominations and on demonstrated academic success.

Pavani Ayinampudi and Swaraj Priyadarshi will be honored with the Intellectual Contribution Award for the Education Leadership, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship (ELOE) Program during HGSE Convocation exercises on May 28. We asked the winners about their time at HGSE, their future goals, and what drives them in education.

Pavani Ayinampudi

Concentration: Higher Education
Hometown: Hyderabad, India

Pavani’s leadership creates inclusive and thought-provoking learning environments that are rooted in empathy and evidence and allow intellectual growth where everyone’s voice is heard. Her curiosity, empathy, and inclusion create space for collective problem-solving that empowers each person to contribute. In ELOE, her peers have described her as someone who has “encouraged and shown us how to examine system-wide structures while prioritizing emotional well-being.” Pavani often seeks opportunities to expand her own thinking and actively encourages her peers to join various educational opportunities. She shares her experience in a way that enriches the learning of others and has shown herself to be an advocate and an inspiration. As one peer described, Pavani has “fostered a richer, more nuanced understanding of education, driving each of us to dig deeper into research and best practices.” – ELOE faculty

What are your post-HGSE plans? 
After HGSE, I’m returning to India to focus on teacher growth in higher education. My aim is simple: Every classroom, whether in a major city or a rural town, should offer students the same high‑quality learning experience. By developing practical, research‑based training and support for college faculty, I hope to raise teaching standards across the system and open wider opportunities for every student, no matter where they study.

What is something that you learned this year that you will take with you throughout your career in education?   
Our motto at HGSE is “learn to change the world.” But before we can change the world, we must be open to changing ourselves, starting with our fixed views and assumptions. This year taught me that honest self-assessment and growing self-awareness are essential foundations for leadership. I also learned that change doesn’t always have to be loud or large; it can begin with a quiet shift in mindset, a better conversation, a moment of deep listening. Because sometimes, the most powerful thing we can do is to hold space — for ourselves, for others, and for possibilities we haven’t yet imagined.

Despite your busy schedule, you always make time for … 
Conversations with friends. Harvard is intense, but it’s the people who make it truly special. Chatting in Gutman, walking in the Square, or hanging out in common spaces on campus allowed me to learn as much — if not more — from my peers than I did from the classroom. These friendships were more than social connections — they’ve shaped the way I think, challenged me to grow, and made this journey richer in every way. And I believe many of these relationships will grow into lifelong collaborations, with roots in the small but powerful conversations we had here.

Any advice for incoming HGSE students? 
At HGSE, opportunities will always outnumber hours. You don’t have to do everything. The real skill is choosing what matters most to you. Not everything exciting is essential. If you can tell the difference between what’s interesting and what’s important for your journey, that clarity will serve you long after you leave Harvard. And remember, you belong here. Your story and your voice add to the strength of this community.

Swaraj Priyadarshi

Hometown: Patna, Bihar, India

Swaraj is a leader who brings care, curiosity, generosity, and justice into each interaction. His peers describe him as someone who creates space for others, honors lived experience, and builds bridges across difference. The HGSE and ELOE community benefited from his global perspective and his purpose-driven, intentional, and deep commitment to improving lives. His ELOE micro-learning community shared that his contributions weren't frequent for the sake of being heard, they were intentional, carefully considered, and always added depth to the conversation. Whether wrestling with questions of purpose, identity, or leadership, they shared that Swaraj had a way of quietly offering wisdom that stayed with them long after the session ended. Swaraj’s presence in a classroom has been noted as immediately elevating the conversation ethically, intellectually, and spiritually and made learning richer, braver, and more human.  – ELOE faculty

What were your goals when you came to the Ed School? 
I came to Harvard not to begin a new chapter, but to deepen a lifelong mission already in motion. For over 14 years — more than half my life — I have had the distinct honor and opportunity to commit to building principled leadership in the remotest parts of India. My journey began when I was 12, born in a remote corner in Bihar in India, where my formal schooling was delayed, and stable housing was never guaranteed. It was Dexterity Global — an organization committed to powering the next generation of leaders — that found me. And it was the organization’s founder, Sharad Vivek Sagar, who identified, groomed, and nurtured me since then and showed faith in me to offer me the opportunity to lead at such a young age. Today, I am 26 and I have been working at Dexterity for over half my life.

Since then, I have had the distinct honor of not only growing with the organization but helping lead it, managing operations that run across continents and time zones. I’ve worked late into the night from American dorm rooms and risen early in Indian villages to lead organizational efforts. The work never paused; only the clocks changed.

I did not come to Harvard to discover my purpose. I came to strengthen it. And Harvard has done exactly that. It has reaffirmed that Dexterity’s work — of building local role models, nurturing servant leadership, and creating systems that turn overlooked children into global changemakers — is not just relevant, it is urgent. In a world of widening inequities and eroding trust in institutions, preparing ethical, courageous leaders from the margins is a moral imperative. Harvard didn’t change my path. It gave the training, language, and perspective to walk it with even greater clarity, conviction, and preparation.

Is there a professor or class that significantly shaped your experience at the Ed School?
Many did. The Foundations courses truly laid the foundation for my evolution from a practitioner to an educator-leader. They’ve been designed with a far-sighted vision I deeply respect, one that honors both rigor and relevance.
Professor Sarah Dryden-Peterson’s Education in Uncertainty felt like a curriculum written for the world we live in today — riddled with displacement, crisis, and fragility. Her class helped me think about education not just as instruction, but as refuge and resistance.

Senior Lecturer Richard Weissbourd’s Becoming a Good Person and Leading a Meaningful Life was one of the most personally moving experiences of my year, connecting the dots between personal integrity and public leadership.

At the Kennedy School, Governor Deval Patrick’s Principles and Politics When Running for Office was both a masterclass and a meditation. To learn from someone who has led with both values and vision offered an incredible opportunity to reflect on the “why” behind leadership — especially in public life.

And at MIT’s D-Lab, the Humanitarian Innovation course took me to East Africa for my first ever trip to the African continent. There, I had the opportunity to practice co-creation with communities, engineers, and displaced populations. It wasn’t just a class. It was a lived experience in humility, systems thinking, and the power of grassroots innovation.

The Harvard experience isn’t merely the sum of classes, assignments, and professors — it’s also the weight of legacy, the history etched into every brick and inscription. Whether it’s the words on Dexter Gate, the wisdom lining Longfellow Hall, or the quiet resilience of Anderson Bridge, one walks here with the profound understanding that we trace the same paths once walked by those who truly changed the world.

What is something that you learned this year that you will take with you throughout your career in education?   
With honesty and humility, I believe the true impact of Harvard will only become clear with time — perhaps five or 10 years down the line. When the learning settles, the questions mature and the work continues in silence. But even now, I know that my time at Harvard has only further strengthened my commitment and offered a richer vocabulary, deeper frameworks, and a more expansive lens to view the work I have long been part of.

One of the most enduring lessons I take with me is this: meaningful educational work is generational. The kind that does not always yield immediate results, but whose echoes are felt across lifetimes. In a world that often rushes toward outputs and metrics, Harvard classrooms have reminded me of the quiet power of long-haul leadership, of building institutions and values that endure.

Preparing principled leaders — especially from communities the world too often forgets — is not an event, it is a process. A patient, persistent, deeply human one. And perhaps the most radical act we can commit to as educators is to believe in what takes time.