India based educator and author Steve Rudolph starts up Multiple Natures to help people find their calling
A chance incident gave me the good fortune of meeting Steve Rudolph at the office of Mindgrep in the beautiful Dharamsala. Steve is an American educator, author and public speaker who is a pioneer in educational methodologies and technology in India that weave Vedic wisdom in modern contexts. He is also the founding directors of Jiva Institute and co-established the Jiva Public School before which he developed a holistic curriculum called ICOT (India's Curriculum of Tomorrow). Steve first came in India back in the early 1990’s and since then has been inclined towards to nation.Early Days
“I have always been deeply interested in music and thought of becoming a rockstar,” says Steve fondly. Realities soon dawned upon him and while in India, he saw a hoarding which broadcasted the need of a teacher and Steve decided to give it a shot. He became an English teacher and got totally involved into it. “I wasn’t just teaching a subject but was infusing life skills into everything I taught,” says Steve.
In 1995, Steve managed to get an internet connection through a tie up with ERNET and this made Jiva Public School to be the first school with an internet connection. “Kids in their 3rd and 4th grade were sending emails at our school while the IIT’s had hardly heard about it,” says Steve.
Over the next two decades, Steve has authored books and has been a prolific public speaker lecturing students, parents and educators. His experiences over the years led Steve to introduce a theory of ‘Multiple Natures’, a psychological model that attempts to understand people’s natures and defining personality traits.
Starting up Multiple Natures
Putting this psychological model into action, Steve and team developed an MN test which helps people recognize their inner beat. The basic question MN tries to answer is the following:
Have you ever wondered why some people are successful and why others aren’t? Is it luck or hard work? Or were they just blessed with special talent?
The answer is easy: they are merely working as per their natures. Every person is born with certain abilities. And when you work according to your strong abilities, you automatically succeed.
The MN Test basically allows one to identify their strengths and choose a career path accordingly. The MN Test consists of 76 questions that can be completed in 30 minutes and is recommended for individuals age 13 to adult. The student version has been translated into Hindi and Marathi.
Current State and the road ahead
The test is online at Multiple Natures and there is a host of information a person can get. Steve likes to refer to the product they’re moving towards as a mix of Tripadvisor and Shaadi.com for choosing a career. Multiple Natures is a career guidance tool and the whole philosophy is not to pin point an individual towards something and sell something but to show direction by taking information from the personality traits. MN gives a bunch of career options a person can work towards but the bigger value addition comes in where it guides an individual through the way. “MN acts like a connecting bridge where a person knows how to reach the destination they want to,” says Steve.
The product is only made for India at the moment and Steve mentions that it is still difficult to sell something intangible online in India. Hence, they’re going to schools and making students and parents aware. Steve has traveled extensively and in the capacity of an educator, has the ability to give this product scale.
An intriguing framework with a large scope, MN has the potential to fit into many problems to work out a solution.
Website: Multiple Natures