Staff & Instructors
The people behind Leaders 4SC
Leaders 4SC is taught by educators who take middle schoolers seriously. Our instructors teach a curriculum that has been built and refined over more than a decade, in small groups where every student is known.
Priten Soundar-Shah
Founder & Executive Director
Priten is an educator, philosopher, and entrepreneur working at the intersection of humanistic values and frontier technology. In 2013 he co-founded the organization now known as Academy 4 Social Civics with his sister Chandani, and he created Leaders 4SC to give young people the rigorous, hands-on civics experience most schools don't offer. He is the author of AI and the Future of Education (Wiley/Jossey-Bass, 2023 — translated into Arabic, Chinese, Turkish, and Vietnamese) and Ethical Ed Tech (Wiley/Jossey-Bass, 2026), and he hosts the Margin of Thought podcast.
Nina Bamberg
Chief Programs Officer
Nina has been a lead educator and curriculum developer at Leaders 4SC since the all-virtual workshop of 2020, and was thrilled to help bring the program back in person in 2026. She has worked with learners of all ages — teaching English as a foreign language to middle and high schoolers in Thailand, facilitating human rights workshops for 4th and 5th graders in NYC, and teaching U.S. history and government to adult learners preparing to become citizens, just to name a few. Nina studied Peace and Human Rights Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and spends much of her time helping teachers explore artificial intelligence and its impacts on learning, civic engagement, and society. She loves Leaders 4SC for its philosophy that young people are capable of asking — and answering — the big questions facing the world.
Chandani Shah
Advisor
Chandani co-founded the organization with her brother Priten in 2013, while she was still in high school, out of a shared belief that students of every age deserve real opportunities for civic engagement. Her passion for social awareness grew out of competitive debate, and she has written extensively on social issues. She went on to earn her JD and now practices as a lawyer at the Legal Aid Society, advising Leaders 4SC on the topics, Task Forces, and projects students work through each summer.
Our instructors
Small groups, real feedback
Every summer, Leaders 4SC is staffed to keep our 1:7 instructor-to-student ratio — so every student gets real attention and personal feedback. Our instructors are educators and experienced facilitators, trained in our curriculum and vetted through a background-check process, because student safety comes first.
See what our team has built.
Explore the curriculum, or reserve a seat for Summer 2027 — registrations completed by April 1 get 10% off.