Akriti Asthana

Akriti is building Salad Bowl, a social–emotional learning platform designed to help young people develop the skills to grow, connect, and navigate an increasingly complex world. Built to work wherever learning happens - after school, during the school day, online, or at home - Salad Bowl makes SEL tangible through embodied, practice-based experiences rather than abstract instruction.

Salad Bowl delivers learning through three flexible formats: short, single-session life skills; progressive, multi-week skill tracks; and tradition-centered festival sessions aligned with the school calendar. All content maps directly to the CASEL 5 competencies and is modular by design, allowing schools, community programs, and families to adapt it to their context.

With nine years of experience across education, philanthropy, and social impact - including roles at the American Red Cross, Boston Consulting Group and Ashoka University, she brings a track record of translating proven practices into scalable, low-lift solutions. She was selected for the Young India Fellowship, a highly competitive liberal arts program focused on interdisciplinary learning and leadership, and later for Atlas Corps, a selective cross-cultural exchange fellowship for service in the United States. Earlier in her career, she helped raise over $250,000 to expand access for first-generation university students in India.

At a time of education budget cuts, rising teacher burnout, and growing emotional strain among students, Salad Bowl addresses a critical gap. Built to be asynchronous, evidence-based, and easy to implement, the platform reduces the burden on educators, while making social–emotional learning tangible, embodied, and engaging for students and their families.