Monali Lodha
Founder, Radiance A. B. Lodha Memorial Foundation
Why I started Radiance
I did not set out to start a school. For most of my working life, I built technology products.
I studied computer engineering in Pune and later did an MBA at Santa Clara University. I worked in California on design and technology for startups, edtech, automotive and engineering companies. Working for a Finnish company, I first came across how Finland approaches education. I also saw in my Finnish colleagues what they call sisu: a quiet, steady determination to keep going when things are hard. I began to wonder how a child could grow this kind of strength from the very beginning of life.
A dream we shared
In 2013, my father and I talked about something we both wanted: to make a difference to how children are educated. He passed away in 2017. I returned to India, hoping to work on our shared dream some day.
What I was looking for
As a new parent, I began to look for a place where my child could learn at her own pace, with her hands, without screens and without exams. I found what I was looking for, in a Montessori learning space in Nashik. That inspired me to undergo the Montessori training myself. In 2020, my family and I founded Radiance A. B. Lodha Memorial Foundation in the memory of my father, and the dream he and I once shared.
In time, I found an answer to my question about sisu. A child does not grow steady strength by being told to try harder. It grows when a child is trusted to stay with a piece of work for as long as it takes, without marks, prizes or the fear of falling behind.
What the work has taught me
At first I approached Radiance as an engineer, designing what I believed was a better system for others. Meeting Manish Jain of Shikshantar changed that. He helped me see that we cannot reimagine education without reimagining life itself: our relationship with the soil, with our neighbours, and with our definitions of success.
If Montessori offered the tools, Krishnamurti offered a mirror. Even the best materials can only produce a refined form of conformity if we adults remain bound by our own conditioning. So inner work became central, for me, and for many of our teachers and parents. Krishnamurti asked what an educator teaches, if not what they themselves are. That question has become my daily reckoning.
Writing of his own education in Hind Swaraj, Gandhiji listed the subjects he had learned and asked: "What of that? In what way have I benefited myself or those around me?" We keep asking this of ours. Our intention is to deepen rather than to scale.
What Radiance stands for
Radiance is named after my father, Anil B. Lodha. He believed that education holds the answer to many of the problems our country faces, and he hoped to work in education one day.
For him, education was a moral responsibility. He continues to be our source of inspiration and support, like a foundation that supports the structure without being seen. Radiance carries the imprint of his life and values. It also carries the imprint of many hands and hearts: mentors who guide us, family and friends who hold space, teachers and parents who do the hard work of working on themselves, children who make this all possible, and well-wishers whose love sustains us.
We are guided by the conviction that education must make us more human, in how we live and relate to one another and the living Earth we inhabit. What value does learning hold if it does not deepen our humanity or strengthen our bonds with one another and the world?
Today
Today I teach Mathematics and Science, and work with our educators on what we teach and how. I also help run the J. Krishnamurti Study Center, where adults meet to read and talk together.
I am still learning. The notes for parents on this site are one way of sharing what we do, why we do it, and where we are unsure.
Monali Lodha, Founder