Social entrepreneur Jyothi Thomas was born to Tej Singh, a Rajput who served in the Indian army and Kasthuri, a homemaker. She married Philip Thomas, a lawyer cum journalist and converted to Christianity. Tragedy struck in 2006 when she lost her husband to cancer.
Jyothi schooled in Church Park Convent in Chennai and graduated in Psychology from Queen Marys College. After her marriage, she shuttled between Chennai and Canada and whilst in Chennai, she was involved in the administration and editing work of Madras Times, a newspaper in which her father-in-law John Thomas and husband played key roles.
She is also a trained Montessarian and had a short stint in the teaching profession. She was a stand by teacher in Good Shepherd Covent for a short period and filled in for any teacher who was on leave.
Jyothi’s only daughter Maria Kavita Thomas, studied B.L at the School of Excellence in Law, pursued her Masters in the U.K. and is now settled in Canada where she works as a consultant. Singing is Kavita’s passion and she is part of an All Women’s group named Diva.
In 1999, Jyothi started CAN Consultants- Creative Artistic Network to bring all skilled men and women under one umbrella.
She recalls her father instilling in her mind at a very young age, the need to be financially independent, to work for social justice and to stand up for the rights of the less privileged and she strives hard to follow his advice at every step of her life.
She has curated numerous projects and invested a lot of her time and efforts in them. However, she has done these projects without taking any monetary compensation.
Some projects that she curated are the creation of puppets for SPASTN, The Spastics Society of Tamilnadu in the late 90’s where she brought in people from the kuppams to create the puppets. The puppets were made to create awareness.
A project for which Jyothi received the most appreciation is the Care for Cops Project during the Covid pandemic period where she spearheaded a project to provide masks for Policewomen. It was an initiative of FICCI FLO of which she was the secretary. FICCI sponsored the whole project. A total number of 20,000 masks were made by girls who were trained specifically for this purpose. These masks were sent to 172 police stations. This project was supported by Deepali Goyal, Sudha Shiv Kumar and Kavitha Dutt.
One project that is very close to her heart is that of upskilling women and making them stand on their own feet. Jyothi regularly arranges for training women in tailoring and Aari embroidery work. The course goes on for 2 to 2 ½ months and after completion of the course, the women become skilled tailors and are able to fend for themselves.
Jyothi is multi-talented and wears many hats. She is also an avid public speaker, a TEDx speaker, a certified corporate trainer, NLP and Gestalt practitioner and a leadership coach. Her passion is to take knowledge to every corner.
She has done projects for many Rotary Clubs and Organizations on a shoe string budget. She is a member of the Toast Masters Club and has gained a lot of exposure from the club.
When it comes to food, Jyothi is a non fussy eater but doesn’t like her food to be spicy. One thing she cannot do without is yoghurt and it is a must in her diet. She had a sweet tooth earlier but now has cut down on sweets.
Jyothi is of the firm belief that lack of money should not stop a person from pursuing their dreams and being a social entrepreneur, she strives to help out the less privileged.
Juliana Sridhar is a lawyer and columnist
