Social Impact Heroes: Why & How AM Bhatt of District Arts & Education Is Helping To Change Our World

… It has to make your heart sing. It can’t just be a clever idea, it can’t just be a cool thought, it can’t just be a great market strategy. It can include all those things, but it fundamentally has to be something that you are going to be willing to give life to.

As part of my series about “individuals and organizations making an important social impact”, I had the pleasure of interviewing A.M. Bhatt, founder and CEO of District Arts and Education.

Guided by the principle that technology is not values-neutral, A.M. Bhatt created the Connecticut non-profit District Arts and Education (DAE) to provide educational programs that democratize access to 21st century digital career and life skills for high school students and young adults from communities that have been historically and systemically under-resourced. The organization nurtures world-class technologists in a learn-by-doing environment through technical and professional training and certificates that serve as a catalyst for transformation. Balancing both the content and the context of learning, DAE helps develop human beings who are highly technology-fluent and deeply humanity-centric.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I guess a couple of things led me to creating what I’ve created here. First, I view DAE as a sort of homecoming. I came to New Haven, CT undocumented, as a young child. This wasn’t the place I was born, but it was the place I consider home and I wanted to contribute something that wasn’t around when I was a kid that would have been a great benefit to my development.

The second thing has to do with what I did in the 25 years I was away from New Haven. I worked as an advisor in consulting firms throughout Europe, North America, and Asia, mostly in the tech, financial services, and pharmaceuticals sectors. My work was focused on large-scale systems change at the industry level change and in product line…