Hello Nishith, you are the head of the ISF Chapter at IBM. Tell us something about yourself

I was born in Rajasthan, a state known for forts and king dynasties.  I come from a conservative family in India, and my childhood, although not perfect, was better than most of the other children there. My family valued education and providing a good education to their kids was the number one priority. Their encouragement and my hard work helped me get admitted into one of the India’s top university, IIT Kanpur. The environment at IIT motivated me to continue my studies and I moved to the US in 1999, to pursue my master’s in Electrical Engineering at the North Carolina State University. I am now working at IBM and simultaneously pursuing an Executive MBA at Duke University. I believe education is one of the best tools for creating wealth and happiness in life.  It is also the best tool to improve our society.

Why did you start an ISF Chapter at IBM?

Poverty in India is widespread and I believe education can play a vital role in improving economic and social status of poor. I have always tried to help poor children at my own level. When I was a kid I saw my mother giving money and food to poor children. I saw her selling her own jewelry to give $1,000 (Rs 40,000) to a poor kid who got admitted to an engineering college but could not afford college fees. I came to know about ISF from a friend, liked the results and to be able to help many more kids than if I worked alone, I decided to open a chapter at IBM North Carolina.

So how did you officially register an ISF Chapter at such a big company?

IBM has an employee charity organization, which raises funds for various charities around the world. Charity registration process at IBM is a simple process.  I then introduced ISF to various people in the company, with the help of my friends at IBM. The fact is that a lot of people want to help poor children, and they are only looking for a genuine and efficient organization that can effectively provide help to poor children. So I just provided those people with the means of doing it, but the credit goes to those who contributed money at IBM! The ISF team is made of business leaders from top tier schools and employees of IBM are willing to put their faith, money and time in such an organization!

Tell us more about your goals for the ISF Chapter at IBM

I have the following goals: (1) develop a self-sustaining funding model for ISF at IBM and replicate it at various companies located in the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina; (2) grow the ISF Chapter within North Carolina, by recruiting dynamic, talented leaders; (3)  develop a strategy to send used laptops to the ISF schools.  The issue with data/technology protection still needs to be worked out, so in the short run, I would like to encourage employees – at the personal level – to donate their used computers to ISF.