Kajol Tanaya

People, Programs & Data

Hey there! Welcome to my tiny home on the internet, where I store my Reflections, Lessons, and Field Thoughts, shaping a long-term career at the intersection of people, programs, and data systems in develolopment sector

About me

Where I Come From

In 2018, after completing my schooling under the ISC board with PCMB science subjects, I made a decisive pivot to literature (BA English Hons) at Lady Shri Ram College. To many, the transition appeared counterintuitive. To me, it was inevitable. Though Bohr, Einstein, and Newton always delighted my mind, it was Shakespeare, Homer, Socrates, and Plato who always had my attention. They shaped how I understood human motivation, power, ethics, and contradiction. Over time, I realised that logic without language, and systems without stories, remain incomplete. That conviction guided my academic choices. Alongside literature, I pursued a minor in Journalism, training myself to observe, document, and communicate social realities with clarity and responsibility.

Lady Shri Ram College

Institutions, Operations and Programs

I have spent formative years inside institutions that serve people directly. Schools, centres, and organisations where outcomes are shaped less by policy documents and more by daily operational decisions. This work taught me that institutions are living systems.

My reflections here examine how institutions actually function on the ground. What breaks quietly. What sustains performance? Why good intentions fail without operational design. And how leadership is practised long before it is formally recognised.

Research, Evaluation and Learning

I work with research and evaluation processes in the development sector. Documentation, theory of change, MEL, and recommendation building have shown me how knowledge is produced, filtered, and often simplified before it reaches decision makers.

In this space, I reflect on learning design, evaluation thinking, and the ethics of representation. How stories from the field are translated into reports. What gets measured. What gets excluded? And how research can either deepen understanding or flatten lived experience.

Skills, Transitions and Professional Depth

Career paths in the development sector are rarely linear. Mine has included deliberate exits, lateral moves, and periods of conscious upskilling outside formal employment. I have built myself a portfolio career where various roles merge into my identity.

Here, I note the tools, frameworks, and reflections that have guided my work. I write to clarify my thinking and to leave a trace that others navigating similar paths may find useful. I note the challenges, perks and career curves that emerge with a portfolio-career arrangement.

Thematic Areas

I am interested in the development areas focused on gender inclusion, migration, informal work, social inclusion, community institutions, value building, ground participation and governance, where policy intent meets social reality.

Questions of dignity, precarity, and agency recur across these spaces, especially for women and marginalised workers whose contributions remain undercounted yet indispensable. Rather than approaching these themes abstractly, I engage with them through operational contexts. My work has consistently gravitated toward themes that sit at the intersection of structure and lived experience.

A Multi-scape of Value Building

Literature, Policy, Research, Communication and Strategic Knowledge Work

Published Works

Other Interests

  • I teach children
  • I practice yoga
  • I draw and paint

Reflections

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