Kavita Wankhade — CEO

In my lifetime, I would like to see Indian cities, especially the smaller, and the less known ones, become more equitable and sustainable (even as discover layers of meanings to these phrases in my career). To contribute to this goal, I work as an interdisciplinary practitioner at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (https://iihs.co.in/). At IIHS, I lead the Governance and Services portfolio of the Practice programme, and serve as Associate Dean, School of Systems and Infrastructure. With formal training in urban design, planning, and social sciences, I have worked across multiple cities in India- across various areas (water and sanitation, disaster management, public programmes), with a focus on service delivery- and systems transformation. For the past few years, my work has focussed on urban sanitation. As part of Tamil Nadu Urban Sanitation Support Programme (https://muzhusugadharam.co.in/), I am leading a team that is helping Govt. of Tamil Nadu scale inclusive sanitation across its 664 towns and cities. The programme is multi-faceted, and aims at systemic change, at scale. Apart from a focus on systems change, my work has increasing focussed on gender and sanitation, especially women professionals in sanitation (https://youtu.be/7fkWAX8eu-Q), as well as sanitation workers (https://bit.ly/3EavLhW). The larger arc of my professional trajectory has been on interdisciplinary work and an effort to be a #ReflectivePractioner. Learning to lead and be part of interdisciplinary teams is a part of this journey because no urban problem can be addressed through any one single profession. While the primary focus of my work has been enabling change on ground, I have endeavoured to bridge the research-practice divide by translating some of my practice work into writing (https://bit.ly/3I4nC0K), and teaching. While COVID has put a pause to it, a lot of my learning comes from travel: professional (being on the field) and personal. In my spare time, you will find me doodling, and working with mixed media, or generally staring at work of Impressionists and collagists. I am here on LinkedIn to get inspired, be part of #ConversationsForChange, and share my learnings.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a leader in urban development and sanitation initiatives.

Location: Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Experience: 19 yrs 4 mos