Empowering Education with Anjali Bhatia

In this episode, host Medha Gupta had the pleasure of chatting with Anjali Bhatia, the visionary CEO of CollegeWise. Having dedicated her career to innovating in the field of education, Bhatia shares her journey from high school experiences that motivated her to start her first nonprofit, all the way to being offered a leadership role at the nation’s foremost college counseling and tutoring organization.

As an avid entrepreneur with an MBA from Wharton University, Bhatia discusses her early ventures including Discover Worlds and Change Educate. The former was inspired by a question she kept getting after giving a talk at a high school assembly about recent events in Darfur, Sudan: “what can I do to help?” As she learned about social entrepreneurship as an answer to that question, she began to educate others, and eventually, started Change Educate to spread her message in a more curricular fashion.

While Bhatia has been at the helm of various organizations for most of her career, she also worked as a consultant at Accenture. In the episode, she discusses her reasoning for taking this step in her career, and the lessons she learned working at such a large company.

She also shares her insights about the benefits of pursuing an MBA, and how it helped her career as an entrepreneur. As a firm believer that so much of learning business is about learning frameworks, Bhatia dives deep into her decision making process that's guided her through her time at Lash Bee Pro—the beauty company she founded and later sold—all the way to CollegeWise. Additionally, she shares her tips for balancing relationships with stakeholders, boards, peers, and others invested in a company’s success, when she has to make a hard decision.

Finally, Bhatia shines a light on the plethora of free resources made available by CollegeWise to stay up-to-date with honest information about the admissions process. She adds her own advice on how to best take advantage of college, and even the opportunity that the admissions process provides to reflect on how far you’ve come. Tune in to this week’s episode of Debugged to hear more about Bhatia’s fascinating careers, and insights for high school students and aspiring entrepreneurs!