Faculty and Staff

Gaurav Jain believes that serious purpose and serious delight belong together. He calls this optimistic approach “joyful content” and brings it to his role leading communications and content at Third Schools. He shapes how the organization shares its stories across its programs and channels, pairing strategy and editorial judgment with the systems that help good communication happen consistently.

He has extensive experience across media, technology, communications, and purpose-led organizations, with work spanning the USA, the UK, India, and the Global South. He helped grow The Ladies Finger, a digital feminist magazine, to more than 600,000 readers a year and built the content program at APC, a 36-year-old global nonprofit network across 74 countries. His work has earned national journalism recognition and coverage in outlets including The Guardian, ELLE, and Time Out.

Gaurav has never really stopped being a student, and has no plans to. He holds degrees in English literature and systems engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, with a year studying English at the University of Oxford. He is now completing an MA in English at the University of Victoria. His academic research looks at comedy, satire, and why we so often laugh our way through hard things. Learning across disciplines, countries, and stages of life has convinced him that there is more than one way to learn, and more than one way to be good at it.

Outside work, Gaurav is a literary nerd and lifelong Bob Dylan fan with a soft spot for spy fiction. He loves the visual arts, the more absurd the better, which suits someone who studies why things make us laugh and cringe in the same moment. He is always ready for a swim or a dance and describes himself as an aspiring squash player, with the emphasis firmly on aspiring.

What draws Gaurav to Third Schools is the chance to tell stories of learning in all its forms: a student finding their footing, a teacher trying something new, a family seeing their child thrive. For him, bringing joyful content to Third means working alongside the people who live those stories and finding ways to share them generously.