Vaish Shastry

Director, Impact Acceleration

Growing up between southern India, Alabama and Arkansas, Vaish has a special appreciation for Southern cuisine and humid summer days. After college, Vaish returned to the South to teach 7th and 8th grade math in the Mississippi Delta—an experience that shaped her worldview on rural poverty and education equity—and how she communicates complexity. If you can’t explain something to an 8th grader, you probably don’t understand it well enough yourself.
 
She currently leads EIF’s Impact Acceleration Platform, providing proactive, strategic support to EIF portfolio companies. In addition, she oversees EIF impact reporting, including impact evaluation investments, analytics and reporting for existing portfolio companies, and working with internal and external stakeholders to develop compelling, data-driven narratives around the impact of EIF investments. 
 
Vaish’s experience spans K12, education nonprofits as well as finance and venture philanthropy. Most recently, she worked on the go-to-market team at Guild, a workforce development/career upskilling startup. She received her MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, where she was a Consortium member, and her BS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
 
Get to Know Me

• Cookbook collector, she is perhaps Ali Slagle’s biggest fan
• Hindustani/Carnatic/Qawwali enthusiast (as a listener, not a performer)
• Her greatest joy is going on walks with her dog (Mr. Teddy Pickles), husband and son