Interview with Shamlu Dudeja, interviewed by Geoffrey Jones, Kolkata, India

In this interview, Shamlu Dudeja--Founder of SHE (Self Help Enterprise) India and Chairperson of the Calcutta Foundation--narrates her inspiring story, beginning as a child in Pakistan on the eve of Partition, to her education and early career as a mathematics teacher, to ultimately founding a major women's organization in Bengal. As Dudeja explains, both of her parents were instrumental in guiding her down her future career path. From a young age, her father--himself a mathematician at a college in Karachi --drilled her on arithmetic and multiplication. Dudeja's mother taught her the art of Kantha--a type of traditional embroidery stitched into multiple layers of fabric, common in the Indian states of West Bengal and Odisha, as well as in Bangladesh. These two seemingly unrelated skillsets have driven Dudeja's career. After spending many years as a mathematics teacher in Kolkata, she was approached by Oxford University Press about writing a series of math textbooks for ages 4-14. The books were a huge success, and Dudeja used the royalties from these and subsequent publications to fund the operation of her non-profit organization SHE (founded in the early 1990s), which simultaneou