Founder's Note | Adira Academy

Founder’s note on why Adira exists

Strong academics are a given, but they are only the starting point. An Adira Strong student asks why instead of memorising an answer. She speaks up, questions, takes risks, fails and recovers. Over time, she develops the agency to decide for herself what matters and how she wants to move forward.

To say I have been lucky in life would be an understatement.

I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. A scholarship brought me to the US and eventually to Stanford. Education opened doors for me, and entrepreneurship changed my life. I worked hard, but timing and luck mattered a lot. I tell our students that often: I was lucky, and so are they. What matters is what we do with that luck.

Continue readingRead less

When Covid hit, I was getting ready to start another company. I love entrepreneurship: building something from scratch, working with smart people and solving hard problems. But I started asking myself whether building one more company was really the best use of my time.

I was also looking more closely at some of the nonprofits we supported. They could tell me how many students they taught or how many programs they ran. My question kept being: what changed? That question sits at the heart of Adira. Try things, measure them, learn quickly and change what is not working.

The girls who come to Adira are already very bright, curious and resilient. Our admissions process is intentionally tough. We are looking for that potential. Adira does not create those qualities: our job is to recognise what is already there, challenge it and push it much further.

That is what Adira Strong is about.

Everything at Adira works toward that. Bright provides academic rigour. Edge brings projects, internships, careers and exposure to people and experiences our students would rarely have access to. Care provides advisory, individual attention and a real focus on wellbeing. Critical Thinking and Dialogue runs through all of it.

We are AI-forward, and we mean that literally. AI is built into how our students learn, not added as a separate activity. Each student works with an Adira Agent that does not simply give answers. It questions, nudges, asks students to explain their reasoning and pushes them to work their way to an answer. AI should extend thinking, not replace it.

Students also learn AI itself through a rigorous AI/ML curriculum, from classical machine learning to deep learning, computer vision, natural language processing and building real applications. They learn to understand AI, question it and build with it. It should become an everyday tool they can use to their advantage, but never a crutch. New technology usually reaches poor communities last. At Adira, we are reversing that.

Adira is always a work in progress. We question what we are doing, measure the results and change quickly. If something is not working, we change it. The methods are not sacred; the outcomes are.

Our larger idea is simple: Change Student. Change Family. Change Community. Change System. We want to prove the model, keep improving it and eventually take Adira to significant scale.

If this makes you curious, spend some time looking at Adira. Ask questions. See what we are building. We are still learning too.

Leo Joseph's signature Leo JosephExecutive Director, Impact Solutions Lab

Note on our Founder

Leo is a successful entrepreneur, angel investor and philanthropist who has built and backed multiple startups in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. Originally from Tamil Nadu, India, he moved to the US, built a career in technology and entrepreneurship, and earned an MBA from Stanford. His own journey was shaped by people who took a chance on him, opened doors and supported him along the way. Today, he believes deeply in paying that forward by creating opportunities for others to learn, grow and build meaningful lives.

AAMF is the larger organisation through which this vision comes to life. ISL is a venture studio, a project of AAMF. Adira is one of ISL’s initiatives bringing this same spirit of opportunity and possibility into education.

Advisory Council

Adira’s Advisory Council brings together leaders and thinkers in education from across the world. They bring diverse experiences, perspectives and expertise to help us think more deeply about our work, challenge our assumptions, and stay connected to the larger questions shaping education today.

Meet the Adira Council