Education · Policy · Institutional Design

Ajay Rudraraju

I work on the systems that shape learning, work, and opportunity.

What I Care About

Currently Exploring

AI for educational judgment, institutional trust, care work, public systems, and the political economy of implementation.

About

A bridge between ideas and execution, with one foot in systems thinking and the other in implementation.

I have spent the last decade working inside and around institutions that shape people's lives: schools, training systems, nonprofits, startups, and government. That work has made me interested not just in outcomes, but in the machinery underneath them — incentives, operational design, legitimacy, trust, and implementation.

My training spans literature, public policy, and education. In practice, I tend to work as a translator between ambiguity and structure: diagnosing systems, designing interventions, building programs, and clarifying what better execution actually requires.

Areas of Focus

Selected Work

Government

Government onboarding at scale

Contributed to large-scale onboarding and systems execution in the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly ecosystem, supporting processes affecting more than 200,000 public functionaries.

EdTech

Curriculum and learning design at BYJU'S

Developed K–12 learning content and instructional systems inside one of India's largest education companies.

Teacher Development

Training and capacity building with the British Council

Worked as a Master Trainer supporting educator development and upskilling efforts at scale, with a focus on pedagogy, communication, and teacher-facing reform.

Social Impact

Strategy and implementation in mission-driven settings

Worked in organizations where execution quality, stakeholder alignment, and institutional trust mattered as much as the idea itself, including roles spanning program strategy, curriculum, and operations.

Projects

Venture

Vidyasha

A skilling and employment initiative focused on women's work in the care economy, with an emphasis on training and placing nannies and building credible pathways into caregiving roles.

Research

Markets and Commons

An evolving body of work exploring institutions, informal systems, public legitimacy, and the political economy of how societies organize value.

AI Tooling

Taxonomy

A Claude-powered assessment-audit tool for undergraduate exams, built from the conviction that evaluation systems should measure understanding rather than reward performative compliance.

Now

Thinking about how educational systems can reduce administrative burden and return time, judgment, and attention to teachers and learners. Exploring workforce pathways, the care economy, and the institutional conditions under which reform becomes durable. Building tools, writing, and projects at the intersection of AI, evaluation, education, and public systems.

Contact

I'm open to thoughtful conversations on education, research, institutional design, and mission-driven work.

Email: ajay@marketsandcommons.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ajayrudraraju
Location: India / Open to global collaboration