We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Monica Kachru a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Monica, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

The genesis of our journey and mission is deeply tied to a tragic event – every parent’s nightmare. On August 11, 2017, I lost my older daughter, Anaya, just two weeks shy from embarking on her college freshman year. During her senior year in high school, she had delved into researching the challenges faced by students lacking her privileges and had uncovered systemic barriers that left these students without a fair chance in higher education. Her findings highlighted financial hardships and a lack of social and emotional support as key factors, ultimately leading to their alienation and dropout.

Growing up, Anaya had always been a kid who was mature way beyond her years. She also had an insatiable desire to help others and make this world better for all. While I was proud of who she was growing up to be, I was also concerned as a mom that she was taking too much on her shoulders. When we lost Anaya, our family struggled a lot with what we could do in her honor, which could truly embody her ethos. In the throes of our grief and desire to honor her dreams, we found her research as an answer and built a foundation around it. The mission of the Foundation is to support students from first-generation and / or low-income communities through college by providing comprehensive support. We are committed to them from orientation day to the graduation day and beyond.

Our Foundation offers support in five key areas:
1. Financial Assistance: Enabling students to attend college by providing essential financial support.
2. Personalized Mentorship: Offering one-on-one guidance through professional mentors for all four years or more, ensuring undivided attention and support. Additionally, incoming students receive a peer mentor, a recent graduate, to assist with social situations, and mentors are available 24/7 throughout the year.
3. Paid Internships: Providing opportunities for hands-on experience, fostering social capital crucial for post-graduation job searches.
4. Financial Literacy: Equipping students with critical financial knowledge to navigate short-term needs and plan for long-term financial goals.
5. Workplace Training: Covering a spectrum of needs, from crafting effective resumes to interview preparation, networking skills, and personal brand building.

Anaya would often say to me, “Mom, we have to level the playing field”. While Anaya is not here with us today, her dream lives on. At the Anaya Tipnis Foundation, our unwavering focus is on “leveling the playing field,” equipping students from first-generation and low-income families with the tools to empower themselves. Our mission is to provide these students with the same resources as their wealthier, privileged peers, ensuring equal opportunities for success.

While the national graduation rates hover around 10% for low-income students, we are looking at 100% graduation rates. Our first cohort graduated this May at 100% graduation rate, and all have already secured coveted jobs in their field of choice. I am so happy to share that we are indeed leveling the playing field!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

The Anaya Tipnis Foundation is not just a scholarship. It is a community and a family that makes a commitment to our scholars to meet them exactly where they’re at, to help them afford college *and* to help them through college. Once students get to campus, the challenges have only begun — homesickness, “weed-out” classes, social disconnect, imposter syndrome, professional path-finding — and they are particularly discouraging for first-generation and low-income students. Only 10% of low-income students and 20% of first-generation college students graduate from colleges which they attend — we knew we could not just give out scholarships. We needed to build community.

“It takes a village” is a phrase that we resonate with deeply. When we raised our kids, when we faced our deepest grief in the wake of our daughter’s loss, when we experienced the highs and lows of our own educational and professional journeys, it was our family, friends, and mentors who believed in us and helped us through. Now, we make sure that our scholars have someone to call when they can’t afford the public transportation to a second job they had to pick up in their spring semester. We make sure our scholars have someone to call when they’re looking for internships and have no professional network to reach out to. We make sure our scholars have someone to call when they’re in Chem 101 class graded on a curve and they need additional tutoring, or just the assurance that they should be confident that they can succeed.

My own professional background as a clean energy executive and business training at the MIT Sloan School of Management set me up to grow this organization, and as we reach our sixth year and 40th scholar of Anaya’s Village,

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

My journey started from a place of tragedy, a parents worst nightmare. I lost my older daughter Anaya on August 11, 2017, nine days shy of her 19th birthday. Losing my daughter was like falling into a bottomless abyss and honestly I didn’t care.at the time where I lived another second. I had no desire to live, I wanted to recoil and never wake up. I felt intense shame, guilt for failing to keep my daughter safe. I felt paralyzing grief from my loss. It was a dark, dark place. In that state of mind…somehow I kept reaching out to hold on to 2 things – my younger daughter and an intense desire to honor Anaya.

Anaya had always been a precocious kid and always wanted to do something meaningful and impactful. In her senior year of high school, she took on a research project diving into the education system in the inner city schools and was saddened to find the schools and higher education was failing our students. She would often rant my ear off telling me how kids smarter than her would fail only because of lack of access. It was simply not fair, she would complain. She would urge me that we had to find a way to level the playing field.

In her honor of all she had taught me…her words became my mantra and the Foundation was born. The mission of the Foundation is to serve low-income and / or first generation students all the way through college From orientation day to graduation day, we walk their journey with them.

I always tell myself that while we don’t get to choose our tragedies, we do get to choose our response to it. Anaya Tipnis Foundation is my response to my tragedy.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.anayafoundation.org
• Instagram: @anayatipnisfoundation
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anayatipnisfoundation/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/anayatipnisfoundation/