(April 17, 2024) Jagriti Agrawal, the co-founder of Kira Learning, is a woman with a mission. Her aim is to bring Computer Science and AI education to middle school and high school students, to empower teachers to teach, and students to learn, through a specially developed curriculum and AI-enabled tools. Now based in Palo Alto, the Forbes 30 Under 30 worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where she helped build autonomous planning systems for NASA’s Perseverence rover. However, the journey to the top wasn’t a smooth one, and Jagriti began her career feeling like an outsider who was far beyond her peers…
A rocky start
When she first arrived at university, Jagriti had never studied Computer Science before, and signed up for an ‘intro’ class, designed for people like herself. However, the class was extremely difficult and she and her friends struggled with it. “It affected our self-worth for years after, because the way you’re taught and your education can affect how you see yourself. That experience made me think of how education can affect self-esteem,” said Jagriti.
Jagriti Agrawal
Although the seed had been planted, Jagriti Agrawal graduated from Cal Tech and joined NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labs, where she was part of a 30-odd member team building the Autonomous Planning Systems for the Perseverance Rover. JPL also had a fairly extensive education programme and Jagriti began teaching through this. “I had also tutored kids, especially those living in women’s shelters,” she says.
Pivot into education
This kindled a new passion in her and Jagriti decided to risk it all. She quit her job at NASA and went to Stanford Business School. “It was a huge pivot for me, but my experiences teaching had showed me the impact of education and that the way someone is taught can impact their self esteem. That was motivating to me,” Jagriti recalls. “After three year sof working at JPL I wanted to see if I could turn this passion into a career. And I knew that Stanford had some good education classes.”
She went to Stanford, she says, with an open mind, knowing the university offered good education classes. A startup still wasn’t on her mind, she didn’t even know anyone who worked in one. “I went with the attitude that I want to learn and work in education and help people. THat was my high level thing.” At university, though, she began talking more to people at startups and learned more about them.
And it so happened that she received an email from Andrea Pasinetti, a Stanford alumni who wanted to collaborate with students for his startup. Jagriti joined him as an intern over the summer, and found in Andrea Pasinetti a strong and supportive mentor. “It’s really important to surround yourself with the right mentors,” she says. “He made me believe I could do it and be a co-founder, much more than I did.”
Kira Learning
The AI education company recently completed its Series A funding, and raised $15 million. Their aim is empower students and teachers at the middle and high school levels in AI and CS education, through a specially designed curriculum, and a host of AI tools. “We work with professors from Stanford and Berklee who have experience in the teaching these subjects,” Jagriti explains. “It’s not easy to build a curriculum that’s exciting and motivating.”
That is the core aim of Kira Learning however – to empower and to motivate. The curriculum includes video instructions, exercises, activities and projects to facilitate learning and to also help teachers, many of whom are teaching these subjects for the first time. Jagriti’s responsibilities involve leading the development of content and curriculum, improving the autograding capabilities and using AI as a teaching tool. “We are developing an AI tutor companion which will guide students when they get stuck on a problem. Our challenge is to make sure that the AI doesn’t produce the wrong answer, or even produce the answer in full. We want the students to not be stuck but we also want them to learn.” A beta version is nearly ready for release.
Scaling up
Their biggest partnership is with the state of Tennessee, and their course has also been used by the state of Ohio. Kira Learning hopes to work at the government level and to introduce their curriculum to schools at a large scale. “We’re also speaking to New York and California,” Jagriti adds. That apart, the company is also setting up a presence in Asia, as well as East and West Africa.
Purpose and legacy
Driven by her purpose to empower, Jagriti says, “I hope I can be someone who helps other people believe in themselves a little more.” Education, she says, has a big role to play in that. “We want to create a curriculum that makes people feel they can be who they want and do what they want. And hopefully, they will also be empathetic and kind,” she smiles.
