Walking through the University of London, with groups of young students bustling about, film fans can play a game of trivia, guessing the backdrop for scenes from Gladiator, The Dark Knight or Desi Boyz.
Kavita Reddi, however, takes a slightly different view.
“I look at them and think, I wish I could come and study here,” she said. Her face lights up as she describes the university’s foundation day, held at the Barbican, where graduates turn up in their finest to collect their certificates.
“I love the sense of hope. I love the fact they have invested so much, and they are getting so much back from that. I love it,” Reddi said.
As chair (and the first Asian to do so) of the University of London’s (UoL) board of trustees, Reddi understands the importance of higher education, both for students and the universities under the UoL group.
“We're a family of 17,” she told the GG2 Power List in an interview at the university in January. This includes Goldsmiths, King’s College, London Business School, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, SOAS, UCL and LSE. Brunel University joined the group last year.
With 250,000 students, 50,000 staff and some 3,700 courses on offer, that is a rather large “family” that Reddi is head of.
She is responsible for oversight of all that the university does - looking after the well-being of students and staff, as well as its finances, its business, its assets and its performance.
There are three distinct businesses for the UoL- a global digital arm, where courses are distributed from its members, across 190 countries, with content distributed through partners.
Within this is a recognised teaching centre model, where UoL partners with institutions vetted by it to deliver its degrees, ratified by the institution, but delivered on the ground.
This includes India. When the country opened up its education sector, Reddi held meetings with senior government officials with a potential view to open a campus there.
It is estimated that there are 40 million students at university in India, but demand for high quality education means 70 million places are needed by 2035.
“Obviously, is a very interesting third plank of our global education strategy,” Reddi said. “We are in talks with the Indian government. We are in the process of considering it very strongly.”
Last year, Southampton university opened a campus in Delhi, while the universities of York, Aberdeen, Bristol, Liverpool, Coventry and Queen’s University Belfast plan to open campuses imminently.
Reddi said, “It's always important when you expand and open a new line of business to ensure quality control and authenticity and that you know you're giving the real McCoy wherever and however you deliver it.
“There's no doubt that opening a foreign campus for a university is an extension of its brand. Our brand is very strong globally, because we are in 190 countries, but I think it is important to make sure that quality control exists and that it is not seen as a quick and cheap way of making money.”
Given its reach in the UK and abroad, the UoL is the UK’s largest provider of international distance and online learning.
Reddi said, “There is a massive question about what value universities bring. It is our responsibility to deliver value to students. This is not a free ride, and we give them something they can use throughout their life… what they want, when they want it. Which means it may not be a three-year degree. It may be the licence to study for three years in chunks, whenever you do it, so it’s lifelong learning, something we specialise in.
“It has to be something that works very closely with employers, not just for the milk round at the end of your degree, but actually right from the beginning to say, ‘let us shape the workforce of the future.’
“Our idea for our university, not just here, but in India, is an employability-focused university.”
Since becoming chair of the board of trustees late in 2025, Reddi has initiated discussions, working with employers such as Microsoft, to look at how AI can be developed and enhanced for education from the get-go.
She said, “Students learn to work with them, so when they leave at the end of one year, two years or three years, they're ready to do the jobs. That on-the-job training begins when they're here, not just at the end.
“Finally, the most important thing about universities or business schools is the networks you make. For all what is available online, ultimately, it's the student experience. We have to enable those conversations and deliver those student experiences, so they form relationships they can take with them for the rest of their lives. That is what university should be about.”
Reddi’s role is overseeing and ensuring the board’s decisions are right and proper within the regulatory guidelines.
“We are accountable to the Office for Students, our regulator, and to our other stakeholder, Her Royal Highness, Princess Anne, our chancellor.”
Reddi was born in Delhi and lived in Kolkata, before arriving as a 15-year-old in the UK. She studied modern history from the University of Sussex, and joined the BBC as trainee.
She began at the corporation in radio, then moved to television and was part of the founding team of the BBC Action Network, an online campaigning platform for communities.
A few years ago, she moved back to India with her husband and three sons, before returning to the UK. The family now lives in London.
While in India, Reddi and her husband launched an AI start-up that helped millions of voters use voice bots to engage with political parties during the general election.
She described herself as a “sleeping partner”, but said her strength was working out ways of deploying technology.
“Nobody knew what you could do with voice,” Reddi said. “All we knew was voice in India was far more usable for a non-literate, non-digital audience than typing and in different languages. We were developing the use of voice bots, and I thought it would be a good idea to talk to the various political parties ahead of the election.”
Reddi’s exposure to the game-changing world of AI took place earlier, when she was in the BBC.
“It was a steep learning curve,” she recalled.
Today, she acknowledged the advantages and challenges of AI across industry, education and society.
“It is already proving completely transformative. And it's a good thing. It is very close to my heart, and I've led thinking on at the university and shaped our strategic response to it.
“AI is a threat, but much more than that, it's an opportunity. It democratises access to education. For a start, it means everyone can find out information at the tip of their fingertips, and critically, for those, it levels a playing field.”
Reddi recalled her own challenges as a student with a math concept and used it to illustrate how AI could have helped where teachers and lecturers necessarily cannot.
“It affords the delivery of personalised education at the learner's pace. It means you can keep going back to whatever you found difficult.
“It also means you can open up curiosity pathways. That's the most important thing.
“What we should be in the business of is saying, ‘let us teach you how to think. Let us not tell you what to think. Let us just teach you the tools of how you unlock these Pandora's boxes of information.’”
AI’s versatility also means the university can offer translations of its courses at affordable prices.
Reddi said, “We operate in so many countries; while the medium of delivery is English, there are occasions when education providers might want to provide something in Hindi or Telugu or whatever, because it makes something much more understandable for the local audience.
“That is possible without as much expense or whatever as was in the past, to take whole bodies of content and get them translated; from a business point of view, it enables us to cut costs.
“It also enables us to provide much more instant response to student queries, to recruitment, the back office, systems and processes… are all being revolutionised by AI.
“From a learner's point of view, it's fantastic, because it opens up entire worlds to them.”
Reddi said the board of trustees has also been talking to London tech week.
“Britain has long had an ambition to make London the centre of AI - to make sure that device development, creativity, innovation, from the lab to commercialisation, and beyond that, to raise capital and grow within Britain, rather than fleeing to America, is done here,” she said.
“The challenge is not that a lack of willingness. People have worked in silos, in industry, or they've worked in education. When you try and bridge the two, there aren't many bridges.
“I see myself as a bridge, whether it's between India and the UK or whether it's between industry and AI, education.
“Once you open those conversations, people are really excited by having whole hosts of conversations.”
Reddi’s other role is that of a non-executive director for IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organisation). As a former journalist and a keen adopter of technology, she can predict how AI will change newsrooms in the future.
She said, “The issue for print media is that there is a massive amount of content being generated. It is hard to distinguish between what is artificially generated and what is human generated content.
“The print media sector has been in decline as people consume more and more content, either through social media sources or through online platforms.
“It's important for the print industry to learn how to have newsrooms adapt to harness the energy of AI. You can produce 20 different versions of the same story in 20 different languages - without needing journalists who can do it all.
“Journalism is going to change from producing to an editorial role much more… to sift, to fact check, to sense check, to make sure the ethics are identified with whatever organisational brand you're working with. All of those things will need to be sharpened.”
Juggling her work commitments and raising a family of three boys with her husband keeps Reddi busy; so her focus on staying fit and eating healthy is understandable.
Prior to the interview, she jokes that students in the central London campus are all healthy. Why? Because by the time Reddi gets to the canteen for lunch, all the salad is sold out, she laughs.
And, despite her career highs, one achievement she is proud of is having fruit platters at board meetings (instead of pastries), she jokes.
As the first Asian chair of the board, Reddi is a role model for young women of colour.
She said, “I was lucky in that my father was very supportive and always thought I could do anything.
“Life is a series of unexpected opportunities, right? I've never had a life plan. We are the only limits on what we can achieve. Therefore, if you don't set limits, we can achieve (our dreams).
“It is important to have allies, male allies. I have been fortunate in that the partner I chose, and my father was very supportive.”