JA Worldwide Board of Governors Spotlight: Bhakti Vithalani

Bhakti Vithalani, Founder and CEO of BigSpring, a lifelong skilling platform, begins her first three-year term on the JA Worldwide Board of Governors in July. She will co-chair a newly formed Learning Experiences Committee formed to achieve greater scalability and impact at JA.

Bhakti is an engineer and entrepreneur working to achieve a lifelong passion to empower people toward a better quality of life through education and technology. BigSpring was born from a decade of work in vocational training, inspired by a report she co-authored while at McKinsey that found only 15 percent of India’s engineering graduates are employable—a statistic that remains true to this day. This drove her to explore approaches that take people from “test-ready” to “job-ready.” At the end of an onsite soft-skills training program in a small Indian town in 2013, Bhakti understood how access to skilling impacts lives well beyond the job, when a field worker at a public utility expressed his thanks because he not only better understood expectations at work but also felt more equipped to raise his children. It was from this experience that Bhakti committed to the philosophy that learning has to be both market-centric and human-centered. In two years since its launch, BigSpring has garnered over 500,000 learners globally across clients that include Google, Uber, United Technologies, and Tata Steel.

Under Bhakti’s leadership, BigSpring was selected as a World Economic Forum (WEF) Technology Pioneer 2020, joining a select group of companies that are poised to have a significant impact on business and society.

Prior to BigSpring, Bhakti was an Engagement Manager with McKinsey & Company, leading client engagements for the Corporate Finance and High-Tech practices. She started her career in product development with Siebel Systems in Silicon Valley. Bhakti is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University (she was among the first women from India to attend, graduating with University Honors) and received her MBA from the Wharton School, where she was named a Wharton Fellow.

JA Worldwide is thrilled to welcome Bhakti Vithalani to our Board of Governors.