Nitesh Gor is Chief Executive of Avanti Schools Trust. His experience encompasses CEO and director roles across the exploration, management consultancy and investment banking industries.
Introduced to the stories of India’s spiritual traditions by his parents and grandparents, Nitesh was fascinated by children’s books that told these same stories with magical imagery. He heard stories of the biblical heroes as a three-year-old and would animatedly debate if Superman was stronger than Samson with his Christian childminder…eventually deciding that Hanuman was stronger than both!
A significant turning point came in his life at age six when his family decided to visit India together. While it was only a three-week trip, and the family was not particularly religious, they visited dozens of holy towns and scores of temples. Here, Nitesh was exposed to mystical India first-hand; something he had heard and read about for years. In India, all the children’s books that he had read came to life. The trip left deep impressions of piety, spirituality, ritual, authority, as well as blind faith, corruption, poverty, and prejudice. But perhaps most of all, Nitesh was left with many questions such as: What is religion really about? What is spirituality? Can we have one without the other?
Nitesh read his first full version of the Ramayana at High school in the USA at the age of 14. He also came across the Bhagavad-gita but found it more difficult to penetrate. Nitesh returned to the UK at 16 filled with curiosity about Vedic philosophy and spirituality. During his last two years of high school, he spent time looking for answers. After speaking to priests, gurus and teachers from several traditions, he eventually returned to the temple where he had started – a Manor house that was bought by George Harrison of The Beatles in 1971 and gifted to the Krishna tradition. There, he found the Bhagavad-gita and was inspired to try to enter this book once more.
He started medical school in September of 1993 and in the winter, the direction and purpose of his life took a turn. A handful of people in the quiet village adjacent to the temple had complained about traffic during a two-day annual festival at the temple. The government decided it was going to force the temple to close. It was a toxic combination of nimbyism and ignorance, but it was also the perfect rallying call for a young person looking for a revolution. Nitesh founded a youth group that fronted the campaign to save the temple from closure, culminating in protests that drew tens of thousands outside Parliament. He spent weekends at the monastery organising the campaign but also learning philosophy, mantra meditation, kirtan and the wider practices of Bhakti. The campaign was eventually won, but he was thrown out of medical school for non-attendance and failing his exams! But it was well worth it.
Nitesh eventually graduated from London University with a BPharm, then worked in start-ups before getting married in 2001 and going on to complete an MBA from London Business School in 2003 and was particularly intrigued by the opportunities of social enterprise.
He had started working in management consulting when his first child was born in 2003. Fatherhood triggered him to begin thinking about education. As he began exploring options, he was left feeling disappointed with the lack of a holistic approach in the education system. He decided that it was time to establish a different type of school – one that was based on spiritual principles and valued character formation, while also delivering education excellence.
In 2005, his proposal won government funding to establish the first school in what would become the Avanti Schools Trust.
While he worked to establish the school in his spare time, he was building a career in management consultancy, and holding Managing Director level roles in investment banking and industry, including founding the Dow Jones Dharma Index. All the while working on deepening and refining his own spiritual understanding and practice. During this time, he explored how his career might relate to his spiritual practice and this led him to write his first book, The Dharma of Capitalism (Kogan Page, 2010), which explores how we can apply spiritual principles in the corporate world.
In 2012, Avanti opened its fourth school. Nitesh enjoyed his involvement in education more than any of his other roles and decided to make the shift from being a part-time volunteer to a full-time CEO. He has since led Avanti to become a leading government-funded academy trust with both faith and community schools. Avanti has been noteworthy in its holistic approach to education and in developing unique curricula for personal development, yoga, meditation, and philosophy, religion, and ethics. He was awarded an OBE in 2018 for his services to education.
Nitesh’s guiding principles for Avanti schools have inspired the establishment of several aligned charitable start-up projects, including a wellbeing and spiritual retreat centre in Lincolnshire (www.thevedanta.org), a restaurant and wellbeing centre in central London (www.omnom.com) and childcare provision (www.littleavanti.org.uk).
His most recent book is titled Before Religion and sets out a reconciling vision for universal spirituality from a Vedic perspective. In it, he shares the need to move beyond the limitations of sectarian religion to a worldview that allows for spiritual inclusivity and convergence.
