Anand Shukla
Type of Fellowship: General (Part time)
Anand is Chief Executive of the UK childcare charity Daycare Trust. He is the chief spokesperson and ambassador for the organisation and is regularly asked by the media, government and private sector companies to provide expert analysis on early years issues. Prior to taking up this role, Anand was Daycare Trust's Business Director. Anand previously worked in social enterprise development at the children's charity Barnardo's and the international development charity Allavida. After studying Modern History and French at Keble College, Oxford, Anand's early career was spent working in new business and product development in the private sector for publishing companies such as Sweet and Maxwell, Butterworths and the Eclipse Group.
Anand has volunteered since university where he taught English and Maths to the children of recently arrived asylum seekers. He also helped primary school children to develop their reading skills as a member of Volunteer Reading Help and served on the Executive Committee of the Camberwell SE5 Community Forum.
Anand has also provided pro-bono social enterprise consultancy, advising organisations working in international development and energy management. He is a published writer, with articles published in the UK media on issues such as childcare; e-commerce; foreign policy and emotional intelligence. He is a trustee of the international development charities Health Poverty Action and CINI UK.
Anand is married to Manisha, a solicitor, and they have a daughter, Malini.
Update April 2012
My initial response after being awarded the Fellowship was the sense of unique potential offered by this programme. We were all too aware of how valuable this opportunity is, and how unlikely it is that we will ever again get the time, space and budget for a personal leadership development programme on this scale. I was not the only one who was concerned about getting these very important decisions “right”. With this in mind, the 360 degree evaluation was extremely important – and has helped to confirm my own views of focusing development interventions on issues of presence and profile.
My initial assumptions that the principal value of Clore will be identifying skills and knowledge gaps, and remedying them through training and development have also been challenged. While this will undoubtedly be an extremely important aspect of the programme, I have been struck by the value in the time to “step off the treadmill” and to reflect upon my career to date, and the assumptions which have underpinned its development. And even at this early stage of the Fellowship, it is clear that there will be a huge amount of benefit and learning from the relations between Fellows, both in 2012 and in previous cohorts of fellows.
I did wonder how much I could escape the day-to-day work issues while I was on my residential week in January. However, while I made sure that I cleared work emails on a daily basis, I did find that the camaraderie, intellectual stimulation and sheer fun of spending time with the fellows did become the focus of my attention and energy. Of particular value were the sessions in small groups – and the Action Learning sets have already provided a great source of support, experience and wisdom.
The camaraderie between the Fellows is particularly special – I had the good fortune of bumping into another Clore 2012 fellow on an otherwise dull train journey back to London from the Midlands, and afterwards he emailed to say that if I ever wanted a drink to talk through some of the work challenges I was facing, he would be happy to do so. Such solidarity is all too rare, and really very moving.
Exposure to leaders’ reflections on leadership has been particularly stimulating. I attended a very good ‘Learning with Leaders’ lunch, organised by ACEVO and with Dianne Thompson of Camelot as a very entertaining and stimulating speaker. Her advice was that coaching and mentoring had been most useful to her in her leadership development – which chimes with my growing sense during the Fellowship to date.
I have secured a coach and a mentor and on the way to commissioning some media training. A key priority for year one of my Fellowship is completing the research. I have identified a topic (performance measures for family information services), and am in the process of identifying a research supervisor.