Aneesa is an educationist, a researcher & practitioner with over 16 years’ experience in leadership, community outreach and innovative educational methods. Aneesa Jamal supports learners in all stages of life and cultures.  Aneesa completed her Bachelors from Smith College in the USA before working with multinationals like Price Waterhouse, James Martin & Xerox. She did her MBA from the University of Washington after which she was with AT&T & Microsoft Corp in the USA. Upon returning to India, she co-founded Al Qamar Academy, an innovative micro-school which used cutting edge, child centred pedagogy. Upon the school’s closure during the pandemic, Aneesa co-founded Cogitation Club which offers out of school programs focused on developing thinking skills in middle & high schoolers.  At both Al Qamar and at Cogitation Club, Aneesa designed and implemented upskilling programs for adults on education & pedagogy. Aneesa is currently completing her PhD at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in Curriculum & Instruction with a focus on Project Based Learning for Climate Change Education. In 2023, Aneesa was selected as one of the 30 CEE Change Fellows from an international pool by the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE). As a CEE Change Fellow, she conducts the Young Climate Authors Educator Training Program which trains adults across the world on climate change and child centred pedagogy. She is also a Global Fellow with the Center for Climate Literacy at the University of Minnesota. Aneesa is a member of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature, the Qualitative Research Association of Malaysia and the Association of Professionals in Curriculum & Instruction, Malaysia. She received the Mentor Award from the North American Association for Environmental Education in 2024. Aneesa has presented her ongoing research in international conferences in the USA, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Germany. Her work has been published in top international research journals and magazines. She has been invited to conduct webinars at Cornell University, University of Minnesota and other institutions.

Aneesa’s impact has been extensive. Aneesa firmly believes in enabling children to nurture their innate passion for learning, creating, discovering and innovating and amplifying their voices to the larger world.  As the founder of Al Qamar, she created a model of effective education which won recognition by none less than the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education and other national and international premier bodies. The school was consistently ranked in the top 10 Indian schools in the national Asset examinations and won the Asset School Award. It also won the RobinAge Bright Sparks Award in 2021 for creative writing and art. Her students won national and international accolades including qualifying for Mensa, awards at the Russian School of Mathematics competition, Global Math Challenge, OMEIAT science fairs, city-wide quiz competitions, top ranks in the EI Asset Talent examinations, qualifications for gifted programs in top US universities, along with stellar performance in the Cambridge and Edexcel examinations. All these were testimonies to the unique learning design at Al Qamar which inculcated a lifelong love for learning without stress or pressure.  

Aneesa’s work not only shaped the students who attended the school and their parents, but also educational institutions across the world who saw the school as a model and visited it to understand how it could be replicated. Aneesa’s book authoring program resulted in over 50 student authored books which have found their way into libraries and schools across the world and are listed on Open Library.  Her Reading Program was adopted and adapted at other schools to build the reading habit in children.  Al Qamar implementation of the HBSCE Small Science program was extensively written about and served as a template for a network of schools across India. The school’s Montessori Arabic program received accolades at the recently Global Association of Islamic Schools’ conference in 2024.  Al Qamar’s field ecology and environmental studies program created a model for school partnership programs in environmental education. Aneesa’s training programs have been attended by educators from over 10 countries across 3 continents. Her seminars, conference presentations and published work advocates child-centred education across the world.   

Hauroon, a B.Tech from IIT Madras, worked with top multinational companies like Microsoft and Infosys. At Microsoft, Redmond, he was a part of the product teams.  He was also a consultant to various companies in India before switching full time to education.  Hauroon designed the pedagogy and the STEM program at Al Qamar Academy & Cogitation. He designs and conducts modules on mathematical & logical thinking math classes, inquiry based science & enriched Math/Physics for engineering aspirants. His students have won prizes at science fairs and international math competitions.