Erin Viegas

After 4 years of a crazy journey, @kunksed and I are closing the doors on @StoaHQ . At a personal level, what started as an internship at the Planning Commission way back in 2012 has been a 12 year rollercoaster across K-12, Higher education and early parenting. Our problems are unique - the scale of primary/secondary education and its quality problem, the growing aspirations of our youth - the upskilling needed and the supply of high quality jobs all present a really large canvas. With Stoa, we took a shot at solving upskilling for the rebellious lot which doesn’t fit the criteria of traditional institutions. We succeeded at a lot of things - getting learning from operators right, getting community of ambitious yet helpful folks right but also failed at a few things. I had the opportunity to learn from many operators who have scaled businesses and it was interesting to be in this unique situation of teaching and learning about business. Thank you to everyone who gave us their weekends as a facilitator at Stoa. One of the best things about Stoa journey has been working with a bunch of really talented folks and hopefully I will have an opportunity to reunite the Stoa Crew. Truly fantastic people who take pride in their craft - you know who you are :-) Of course Stoa as a community could not have been what it is without our alums - many of them have started on their own and some are part of core teams at fast growing startups. More importantly, they found the professional network and the space to chart their careers better. Stoa did become my social identity within the small circle who cares about such things and it is kinda terrifying to reinvent it all over again. But I guess that’s life :-) Grateful to everyone who cheered for us from the sidelines and in the trenches. Will write more about my learnings from these 4 crazy years soon.

@StoaHQ cohort 11 kicks off with a fireside chat with @mukeshbansal06. Thank you @chandrarsrikant for hosting 👋 More Stoa Dialogues coming your way!