Harshita Jain, a Laidlaw Scholar at Oxford Saïd Business School, on helping women-led social enterprises across the Global South access the capital they deserve.
Please tell us about your background and what led you to apply for the Laidlaw Scholarship
I grew up in a joint family in a tier-2 Indian city, where tradition dictated that men ran the family business and women ran the home. That certainty shattered when a family feud triggered a financial setback that pushed us into years of hardship. I watched my elder sister take on responsibilities far beyond her years and help my mother, who had no formal education, build a home business from nothing. Their sacrifice taught me my earliest and most enduring lesson: a woman’s financial independence is not a luxury; it is freedom. That belief has shaped every choice since. I became my school’s Head Girl and set up a student mental-health cell, chose public education at the University of Delhi to spare my family further burden, and joined Enactus, where I founded Project Aarogya, a rural tele-health network that reached over 150,000 people with medicines up to 80% cheaper than branded alternatives. Today I am a co-founder and Director of MASH Project Foundation, a Gates Foundation Goalkeepers-awarded social enterprise. I have led 100+ campaigns reaching more than a billion people, over 30 of them focused on gender — from building the 700-strong Women Climate Collective to amplifying 200+ women-led enterprises. Yet the deeper I go, the clearer one gap becomes: brilliant, women-led social enterprises still cannot access the capital they deserve. I applied to Laidlaw because it backs women who want to lead systems change, not merely take part in it. Its sisterhood, mentorship, and belief in female leadership are exactly what I need to build my next venture: helping social enterprises across the Global South tell stories that move capital, and closing the gap between impact and investment.
What is the biggest life challenge you have overcome and what did you learn from it?
My biggest challenge came as a child, when my father’s sudden financial setback upended everything I knew. Almost overnight, our lifestyle changed, and at school I found myself isolated from friends who no longer saw me as one of them. For a young child, that loneliness was crushing. I had a choice: to shrink from it, or to rise. I chose to rise. I threw myself into everything I could, eventually becoming Head Girl. But the moment that changed me was realising I wasn’t the only one struggling in silence, so I started a mental-health and mentoring cell in my school, led by professionals, to create the safe space I had needed myself. That experience taught me two things I still carry into every room. First, adversity is not something to hide but something to convert: my hardest years became the source of my purpose. Second, the fastest way to heal your own pain is to build something that spares others from it. What began as personal survival became my earliest act of leadership.
Briefly describe a scene from the future you are striving to create.
It’s 2035, in a tier-2 town not unlike the one I grew up in. A young woman sits across from a room of investors — not to ask for charity, but to close a funding round for the social enterprise she built. She speaks in her own language, tells her story on her own terms, and capital flows to her as readily as it once flowed only to men in the big cities. Down the street, her mother runs a business she was once told she could never manage. Neither of them calls this empowerment. They simply call it normal. This is the world I am building at MASH: one where a woman’s ambition is never limited by her postcode, her gender, or her access to capital, where the next generation inherits equality not as a distant aspiration, but as an ordinary fact of life.
What is the most useful/impactful piece of advice you have been given in your life?
“Don’t wait to be given a seat, build your own table.” A mentor told me early on to stop waiting for permission and start creating the opportunities I wanted to see. It reframed leadership entirely: it isn’t a title you’re handed, it’s the value you choose to create. Every venture I’ve built since, from Project Aarogya to MASH, began by acting before I felt fully ready.
Conversely, what is the WORST piece of advice you have been given?
“Stick to what’s safe for women.” Early in my career I was encouraged to help women build livelihoods only in ‘suitable’ areas like sewing, cooking, and caregiving. It seemed practical, but I realised it quietly reinforced the very stereotypes that keep women out of leadership and high-growth sectors. I’ve spent every year since proving that women belong everywhere — including the rooms where capital and power are decided.
What are your top 3 tips that will help someone become a better leader?
- Lead with narrative. People rarely move for data alone; they move for stories. Learn to turn your vision into a story others can see themselves in, and you can align anyone, from a village collective to a global funder.
- Build before you feel ready. Waiting for perfect conditions is how good ideas quietly die. Start small, act early, and let momentum, not certainty, carry you forward.
- Turn your scars into strategy. Your hardest experiences are often your sharpest insight into problems worth solving. The best leaders don’t hide their struggles; they build solutions from them.
Which leaders in the world inspire you the most and why?
- Rohini Nilekani — for reimagining Indian philanthropy around trust and ‘societal thinking, and for showing that giving power away, rather than hoarding it, is the most catalytic thing a leader can do.
- Melinda French Gates — for putting women’s economic power at the centre of global development and backing it with real capital. Her conviction that lifting women lifts everyone mirrors what I have seen on the ground.
- Safeena Husain — founder of Educate Girls, for building a rigorous, last-mile model that has brought hundreds of thousands of girls back into school, and proving that compassion and hard data belong in the same strategy.
What does it mean for you to be a Laidlaw Scholar?
To me, being a Laidlaw Scholar means being backed — not only financially, but as a leader in the making. It is an investment in my potential to reshape systems rather than simply fit into them. Most of all, it means belonging to a sisterhood: a global community of women who lift as they climb, share opportunities instead of guarding them, and remind me that leadership is never a solo act. Laidlaw gives me the mentorship, the network, and the courage to become a bolder version of myself — and the responsibility to open doors for the women who follow.
Quick-fire Questions
📺 Currently Binging:
Sharp, tense, and full of women running the room — my kind of watch.
Poor Economics — Banerjee & Duflo
It reshaped how I think about poverty, evidence, and what actually works
Unstoppable — Sia
For the days that need a little extra fire.
🌈 Something that made me feel joy recently:
Long autumn walks through Oxford with my MBA cohort — proof that community is its own kind of joy.
💫 A message from Harshita:
I’d love to plug two things close to my heart. MASH Project Foundation — the social enterprise co-founded and lead — builds an ecosystem for changemakers, helping nonprofits, funders, and companies turn impact into narratives that move both people and capital. And India Impact House, which I launched at Skoll World Forum in Oxford, brings together India’s boldest funders, founders, and practitioners to reimagine what leadership in the impact sector should look like next — convening around the Skoll World Forum to move the sector from rhetoric to practice. You can also follow my writing on gender, philanthropy, and social impact on LinkedIn.
Thank you for this platform — and to the women of the Laidlaw community, who are living proof that when we build together, we all rise faster.
Harshita Jain, is a Laidlaw Scholar at Oxford Saïd Business School. You can find Harshita on LinkedIn. The Laidlaw Women's Business Education Scholarship aims to help build a pipeline of future women leaders through access to best-in-class education, resources and global networks by providing full and half scholarships to women who would not otherwise be in a position to reap the benefits of attending an outstanding school.
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