Azad Oommen is a social entrepreneur and nonprofit executive from Kerala, India. He co-founded Global School Leaders (GSL) in 2017 and ran it as CEO until September 2024, building it into a school leadership development organization operating across five countries. Under his tenure, GSL trained more than 13,000 school principals in communities across the Global South where leadership development is almost always underfunded and largely overlooked.
He is also the husband of actress Poorna Jagannathan, which brings most people to his name in the first place. His professional record, though, is a different story entirely, and it goes back nearly 30 years.
Table of Contents
Background: Kerala, Georgetown, Princeton
Oommen was born and raised in Kerala, India. He studied International Economics at Georgetown University, then completed a Master’s in Public Affairs at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. That combination of global economics and public policy set the direction for everything that followed.
He later moved to the United States permanently, eventually settling in Los Angeles with his family.
Early Career: Three Programs, Three Countries
Before he founded anything, Oommen spent the early part of his career running leadership development programs across three continents.
Between 1997 and 1999, he served as a Director at the Congressional Hunger Center in the United States, managing the Mickey Leland Hunger Fellows Program, a leadership pipeline for professionals working to address food insecurity.
He then joined the American India Foundation (AIF), where he ran the Clinton Fellowship for Service in India, placing young American professionals inside frontline civil society organizations across the country.
After that, he managed the Clinton Democracy Fellowship for City Year in South Africa, a program connecting leadership development to post-apartheid institution building.
Three programs. Three very different national contexts. All built around the same idea: that getting the right people into leadership roles inside struggling systems produces better outcomes than working around those systems entirely.
Central Square Foundation: India’s Education Philanthropy
In 2011, Oommen became the founding Executive Director of the Central Square Foundation (CSF) in India, a venture philanthropy fund established by Ashish Dhawan, an Indian investor and philanthropist.
CSF’s work focused on investing in organizations improving K-12 student learning across India. During Oommen’s four-year tenure, the foundation:
- Backed early-stage education startups working on instructional quality
- Pushed for evidence-based policy reform in the Indian K-12 system
- Ran the Edcelerate accelerator, a structured support program for early-stage education entrepreneurs
He stepped back from the Executive Director role in 2015 and has remained on CSF’s Advisory Board since.
Co-Founding Global School Leaders
In 2017, Oommen co-founded Global School Leaders with Sameer Sampat. Sampat had previously served as the first CEO of the India School Leadership Institute and worked as a researcher at Harvard University’s Education Innovation Laboratory.
The founding argument was direct: school principals are the most consequential and most consistently overlooked adults in any school system. GSL’s own data puts numbers to that argument, showing that investing in school leader training adds roughly 5% to a school’s operating budget while increasing student learning by up to 30%.
GSL delivers through local partner organizations in each country rather than running programs directly. Every intervention is built with the local context, not dropped onto it.
Seven Years, Five Countries, 13,000 School Leaders
Countries of operation: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia
By the time Oommen stepped down from the CEO role in 2024, GSL’s footprint looked like this:
- 13,000+ school leaders trained since founding
- 6,000 school leaders surveyed in the 2024 PULS report on leadership and technology across schools
- 18 countries represented in that survey
- 40+ partner organizations involved in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) Hub launch
- 1,000+ participants and 36 speakers from 120 countries at GSL’s first School Leadership Matters Summit
The LAC Hub, co-created with Centro Lemann and partners from Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru, launched in 2024 and formalized GSL’s expansion into Latin America.
That same year, GSL launched the Leadership for Learning program in Ghana, running through mid-2027, targeting instructional leadership support in low-fee private schools. In Colombia, a partnership with early childhood organization aeioTU produced the first free, open, Spanish-language school leadership course available to educators across the region.
In 2024, UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report formally named school leadership as a central lever for education system improvement, which was the same argument GSL was built on in 2017.
The 2024 CEO Transition
At the end of September 2024, Oommen stepped down as CEO after more than seven years in the role. Camila Pereira succeeded him. GSL’s 2024 Annual Report describes the transition as a planned handover, with Pereira stepping in to carry forward the organization and develop a new long-term strategic plan.
Oommen did not leave the organization. He joined GSL’s Board of Directors, shifting from operational leadership to governance.
Where Azad Oommen Stands Today
As of March 2026, Oommen holds board and advisory positions across the education and social impact sector:
| Organization | Role |
|---|---|
| Global School Leaders | Board of Directors |
| Central Square Foundation | Advisory Board |
| Saarthi Education, India | Advisory Board |
| Villgro USA (Impact Innovators & Entrepreneurs Foundation) | Board Member |
| India School Leadership Institute | Board Member |
| Congressional Hunger Center | Board Member + Alum Council |
In March 2026, he attended Project Reinvention, a gathering organized by The Circle India for practitioners working across development, civil rights, remote education, and accessibility. He has also been connected to the Positive YUVA Network, which supports young people transitioning out of institutional care into independent life.
There is no public announcement of a new full-time organizational role at this time.
Published Work and Speaking
Oommen has written and spoken for several credible platforms in global education and development:
- India Development Review (June 2017): “Inside Out: Changing Systems from Within”, arguing that the most effective development interventions work within existing government systems rather than around them
- Global Partnership for Education (May 2020): Co-authored with Sameer Sampat on the role of school leaders during COVID-19 school closures
- WISE Qatar (August 2020): Co-authored with Baidurya Sen on practical lessons from running online professional development for school leaders during the pandemic
- World Bank Blog: Featured contributor on school leadership in low and middle-income countries
- WISE Qatar Summit (September 2020): Panelist on school leadership during and after COVID-19
Personal Life
Oommen and Poorna Jagannathan married on January 11, 2003. Their son, Anav Oommen, was born later. The family lives on the Westside of Los Angeles in a home they purchased in 2008 and eventually renovated. Oommen has mentioned that the home’s U-shaped layout echoes the traditional Kerala nalukettu, a courtyard-centered ancestral home design common in his home state.
Jagannathan is recognized for her roles in HBO’s The Night Of and Netflix’s Never Have I Ever, and for co-producing the play Nirbhaya, which won the 2013 Amnesty International Award for its work addressing sexual violence.
Despite being married to one of the more publicly recognized figures in Indian-American entertainment, Oommen has kept almost entirely clear of the spotlight. His online presence is nearly all professional: published essays, board listings, and conference appearances.
What Three Decades of Work Adds Up To
Oommen spent nearly 30 years getting into rooms with the people running institutions, giving them better tools, and measuring whether it worked. He did that at the Congressional Hunger Center, at CSF, and at GSL.
When he stepped back from the CEO seat in late 2024, the organization he helped build was expanding into new continents and had just received a formal endorsement from UNESCO. He moved to the board without a press release. That, more than any of the numbers, captures how he has operated throughout his career.
