Vikas Pota

Founder

T4 Education

Vikas Pota is Chairman of global education charity the Varkey Foundation and Group Chief Executive of Tmrw Digital, which invests in education technology businesses and has established the Tmrw Institute to advance understanding of the education technology sector in key areas.

At a time when we face a global education crisis – with the urgent need to recruit 69 million teachers to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of universal quality education – Vikas responded by getting presidents, prime ministers and even the Pope around the table by convening the annual Global Education & Skills Forum – widely known as the ‘Davos of education’ – to discuss how to meet this challenge.

Vikas established the $1 million Global Teacher Prize, which has brought together world leaders and stars such as Lewis Hamilton, Matthew McConaughey, Princes William and Harry, Bill Gates, Hugh Jackman and the late Stephen Hawking in celebration of the work teachers do. The prize – known as the ‘Nobel of teaching’ – has unearthed the stories of thousands of inspirational teachers to shine a spotlight on the profession. Vikas identified that by raising teacher respect in this way, we could help encourage the best and brightest to go into and stay in the teaching profession to solve the recruitment and retention crisis.

Vikas has won numerous awards and honours for his work including being named by the Evening Standard as one of London’s Top 1000 most influential people, being appointed a visiting practitioner by Harvard University, and being selected to join the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders programme by HRH Queen Rania of Jordan. ​