When we launched LedBy in 2019, we didn’t arrive with an instruction manual. None of us were trained educators. We weren’t experts in pedagogy. What we did have was curiosity, proximity, and an unshakable belief that Indian Muslim women deserve spaces that centre their ambitions, not just their adversity.
LedBy offers leadership, career, and entrepreneurship programmes designed specifically for Indian Muslim women, built through years of listening to what they need, and evolving alongside them.
What we have learned
Start with listening, not planning. Before you design, ask questions. Not once, but again and again. And keep listening. Listening builds relevance, and relevance builds trust.
Volunteer-driven feedback loop is one of the core ways we’ve institutionalised listening.
In the first year, this meant long phone calls, WhatsApp messages, e-mail exchanges, and feedback forms. Over time, this turned into a structured and open-source volunteer programme, where anyone could sign up to conduct five structured interviews with Muslim women across India. Today, that volunteer-driven feedback loop is one of the core ways we’ve institutionalised listening. It’s what tells us what to keep, what to tweak, and what to drop altogether.
But listening isn’t only external. At LedBy, we build every programme with the expectation that the participants will co-design it with us—not just for themselves but also for those who come next. Our cohorts aren’t just learners; they’re stewards. They are expected to offer feedback on what worked, but more so on what didn’t.
Designing for confidence, not credentials
Too often, programmes built for marginalised communities replicate the same hierarchies they claim to disrupt. They look for polished resumes, elite language fluency, the ‘right’ degree, or the ‘right’ answer.
We’ve learned to design for confidence, not just credentials. Over time, we have realised that it’s more important to spot drive and determination rather than fluency or presentation. We have interviewed thousands of applicants and fine-tuned our questions to understand where someone is coming from, what they hope to build, and how committed they are to growing. Many talented individuals are held back not by lack of skill but by self-doubt, social messaging, or isolation. This is why selection should measure intent, not polish. We should look for purpose and resilience. It’s not always easy to get this right but when we do, it shows. Participants who may have initially been hesitant often go on to become our strongest contributors.
Some of our most impactful alumni joined with broken confidence but also a hunger to grow. They may not have been the best public speakers, but they were often the first in their families to speak out. For instance, Afreen, a 24-year-old from Bhopal, barely spoke during the first two sessions of our fellowship. But by the end, she was leading group presentations and hosting community events. Today she mentors newer participants. Sana, who had never written a resume before joining us, went on to land a role at a global tech company, and now returns as a facilitator.
Our job was never to complete them. It was to build the scaffolding they could hold themselves up on. This scaffolding includes 20-minute pulse checks at the start of each session—open, unstructured spaces where participants can talk about how they feel, what they’re carrying, and what’s bothering them. It’s not immediate. It often takes weeks for that trust to build. But when it does, it becomes the most special part of their experience. They’ve told us so in every survey.
The programme is defined by your community, not your curriculum
The most valuable outcomes often emerge not from content delivery but from the peer group and alumni network, and from a sense of belonging.
One of the most consistent pieces of feedback we have received is that the community is what makes LedBy feel different. We call it our ‘tribe for life’, but it’s not just a phrase. Our alumni come back as mentors, advisers, speakers, and facilitators. They host sessions, fundraise for one another, pass job opportunities down the line, and write each other letters of recommendation. They show up.
The challenges faced by a woman from Tamil Nadu can differ greatly from those of a woman in Uttar Pradesh.
And this intimacy is intentional, not accidental. We’ve learned that inclusion isn’t about scaling programmes; it’s about scaling relationships. That’s why we build small, consistent pods in every programme—these are tight-knit groups that hold each other accountable. It’s why we make sure there’s always a familiar face on a Zoom screen. It’s also why we centre storytelling and personal narratives as a core leadership skill. Because telling your story is often the first step in reclaiming it.
Over the years, we’ve also had to navigate the internal diversity of the Indian Muslim women community. The challenges faced by a woman from Tamil Nadu can differ greatly from those of a woman in Uttar Pradesh, not just in language but also in visibility of bias, access to networks, and even family structures. Designing forward means acknowledging these differences and refusing to flatten or homogenise them.
We’ve also seen how access shapes aspiration. Some women arrive with clarity about their goals. Others are still forming the language to describe what they want. But the moment they’re surrounded by a supportive peer group, especially one that mirrors their identity, the shift is rapid. Like a participant said, “I didn’t know I was allowed to want more until I met the others here.”
Inclusion is a verb
Programmes don’t need to be perfect, they need to be responsive. Feedback loops, pulse checks, and real-time iteration are more important than glossy decks. Real impact scales when participants become mentors, facilitators, or advocates themselves.
We run year-on-year pulse checks with our 1,200+ alumni to see what they need. We invite them to orientations and graduations, and ask them to come back as panellists and facilitators. And we expect them to pay it forward by mentoring others, sharing their learnings, and amplifying the voices of their peers.
We know that not all of them are engaged all the time. But when one of them needs help, like a resume reviewed, a difficult conversation at work, or just a listening ear, we’re there. And, more importantly, they are there for each other.
That’s inclusion as a practice. Not a checkbox, not a week-long campaign, but a daily commitment to centring voices that are otherwise left out.
We’ve made some mistakes. We’re still learning what alumni engagement could look like at scale. We don’t have a perfect model, and maybe we never will. But what we do have is intention. The intention to listen, adapt, and keep showing up. Because for women who’ve been excluded from systems their whole lives, consistency matters. Showing up again and again, even when we don’t have all the answers, builds the kind of trust that change can grow from.
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Know more
- Learn why many marginalised students can’t access scholarships.
- Read this report on rights violations and exclusion in citizenship trials in Assam.
Do more
- Apply to LedBy programmes.
