Poonam Venkatesh is the Admissions Director at SecureMyScholarship, the portal which aims to help students apply to their dream universities (even abroad). Hence, it’s the ultimate platform that makes education more affordable and accessible for students.
Poonam Venkatesh and her entire team at SecureMyScholarship work with over 400+ college partners spread across the UK, USA, Canada, UAE, and Australia. Through this collaboration, they are assisting students in applying to any of their desired universities irrespective of their caste, gender, age, social status, or financial status.
Poonam and her team believe that students should focus on the universities they wish to go to, look at the right fit for themselves rather than worrying and focusing more on affordability right from the start. We are focussing on the right fit and to make education affordable be it any university.
To understand how Poonam Venkatesh and the entire team at SecureMyScholarship work and help students achieve better education, let’s check out our interview with her below.
Explain the background of you and the company in detail.
At SecureMyScholarship.com, our mission is to make education more accessible and affordable for all by helping students reduce their tuition burden. We offer students an opportunity to study abroad with guaranteed fee waivers and scholarships at their desired universities from our 400+ university partners in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, and UAE.
My name is Poonam Venkatesh, and I am the Admissions Director at SecureMyScholarship. With 11 years of experience in the higher education industry, I believe that higher education needs to percolate to every realm of society. Education for all, irrespective of age, gender, caste, or social status, is the need of the hour in recent times.
Studying abroad, which used to be a distant dream for many families in India and the developing world until the ’90s, has become quite approachable today, thanks to the 70 billion dollar growing industry and many foreign universities’ regional presence. With the experience of working with private, public & global universities, I am now a part of SecureMyScholarship to make the higher education dreams of students come true.
What are your goals?
My goal, for now, is to establish SecureMyScholarship as the go-to platform for students across UAE, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka when they seek affordable study abroad options. Our goal as an emerging scholarships portal is to make students aware of all the options they have when they decide to start their study abroad journey. My team and I will be working to do the right thing rather than trying to be right. There will be disruption but for all the right reasons.
What is special about the company?
We at SecureMyScholarship believe that no student should be denied their right to quality education. We tell students, “you should study at your dream university,” instead of “you should only study at a university you can afford.” Our mission is to make education more accessible to every student. To date, we have transferred over $4 million in scholarships to students, and we are very proud of that because that represents a real difference in the lives of students who interact with our platform.
What do you feel is the biggest strength of yourself/company right now?
Our strength is our market and target audience. India has always been a region that creates future leaders. Many of our current MNC leaders globally are of Indian origin. On the other hand, Dubai and the broader GCC are emerging as leaders in industry and education. Quite recently, a survey in India concluded that 94% of students are looking for study abroad options. More and more students are looking at taking up specialized courses, vocational education. STEM, liberal arts, work, and study combinations are popular now. We are in a price-sensitive competitive market, and students and parents are constantly looking at funding options, scholarships, and aid when studying abroad.
Poonam Venkatesh, What has been your impact?
To date, we’ve connected students with over $4 million in scholarships at universities all over the world. I’d say more than anything else that it has been both our biggest success and proudest achievement.
What was the path you/your company took to get to where you are today?
Studying abroad is an excellent choice for students that allows them to grow culturally, socially, and emotionally during college & professionally while they gain experience. Any world-class education system makes them competitive and skillful, placing them ahead of the curve in their career paths. Our company was founded by someone who became an entrepreneur while he was still studying. For most of us or most start-ups, that one decision makes or breaks our vision. The path we choose is the decision to help more, serve the community more, or do something meaningful that creates an impact apart from the hard work we put in. We believe that one should change the world one life at a time.
Poonam Venkatesh, Why did you want to be the head of this company?
Moving to a start-up was a big decision. But the fact that I can do more and help more students to realize their potential is a very big motivational factor for me. Students inclined towards higher education abroad focus on re-skilling, upskilling, using technology, and being more aware of all the available options. On the other hand, universities are becoming more student-centric in lieu of the pandemic. Today we are in a world where learning is more important than brand names. Hence you see blended learning models, online courses, micro-credentials, continuing education initiatives, and more.
It’s a world where the student has endless choices and options; it’s a world where the possibilities for both SecureMyScholarship and myself are limitless. However, if I make a difference in the lives of even 5% of these students, my purpose is fulfilled.
What have been the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome?
As an individual, I come from a public sector environment, so the biggest challenge has been shifting towards a start-up environment. The culture, processes, procedures, and team structure are very different from a corporate environment. Still, while that’s been a challenging hurdle to overcome, I must say it’s also been one of the charms that attracted me to this opportunity.
Give us one word that describes you the best.
Ambitious.
Poonam Venkatesh, What makes you excited about Mondays?
Mondays are the mirror where you can see your past week and plan for the next. The idea that there is so much more to achieve and do gets me excited for Mondays.
What do you value most about your culture and vision?
Our mission is to make education more accessible to everyone. In doing this, we will establish and cement the SecureMyScholarship brand as the number one choice for students and parents in the Middle East and South Asia when looking at study abroad options, financial aid, scholarships, and fees waivers. From a cultural standpoint, the open-door policy and the fact that we call it as we see it makes this organization very special. There’s a lot to learn from everyone here. We are a family, period. Although most of the team was already in place when I joined, I have never felt like an outsider, which is the most valuable feeling for any individual in any organization.
What are your company’s strategies, and how do they stand unique from your competitors?
Our focus is on students from middle-income or lower-income families, who are often ignored by the broader higher education sector for affordability reasons. We aim to make education accessible by giving them access to guaranteed fee waivers for universities in the USA, UK, UAE, Canada, and Australia.
My industry colleagues and friends have seen me grow and become who I am today. I have learned a lot from everyone in many ways. We have traveled together, worked hard regionally to grow student interests and create opportunities, seen many policy changes, and dealt with immigration issues. Some of them are my competitors now. But if the pandemic has taught us one thing, it is that we all are in the same boat, rowing towards a common goal.
My competitors are still my friends and colleagues. I respect and appreciate that we all are unique in our ways but work together in the same industry. I can speak for every genuine competitor that student success is the most important goal for all of us at the end of the day.
What are the key values that helped you overcome the roadblocks/challenges in your career? Tell us something about your memorable incident in your leadership?
Our regions’ culture has shifted from ‘Which university to go to’ to ‘What am I getting in return. In simple terms, we, as advisors or counselors, have to keep up with student trends. Myths associated with studying abroad are the biggest roadblocks for us. It will take a lot of work to clear these misconceptions and prejudices, but with every passing day, we are making progress.
As a leader, the one thing I tell my team is that standing up for what’s right and doing the right thing is the best way to overcome any hurdle. For us at SecureMyScholarship, doing the right thing is more important than performance metrics.
I’ve advised parents and students to grab opportunities for their betterment in the past. Those opportunities may have been in their best interest rather than ours. My team has seen that. They have learned that the counseling approach is more important to our field of work than a sales approach.
How do you see the company changing in two years, and how do you see yourself creating that change?
Our industry is ever-changing. Just look at how much the pandemic has changed us, our work environment, and our industry. From a company standpoint, we must stay true to our values and our mission, and in doing so, we believe that we can weather any change.
Over the next two years, we hope to significantly expand our team and our reach to cover more territories and regions so that we can make possible the higher education dreams of as many students as possible.
Within two years, we hope to expand our operations and capabilities to be in a position to send ten thousand students overseas every year and cross $100 million in scholarships transferred to students.
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