
About Us
Skilled technical experts with rich international experience who work really hard for clients.


SLP Team Talks | Design and Sustainability

SLP Team Talks | Dubai World Trade Center
The Sustain Labs Core Team

Dr. Miniya Chatterji
Chief Executive Officer
Dr. Miniya Chatterji was Chief Sustainability Officer of Jindal Steel & Power group of companies 2014 - 2017. Prior to that she was working at the World Economic Forum 2011-2014 in Geneva where she managed the WEF’s Young Global Leaders Community in the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. Before that, Miniya was managing a Euro 200 million hedge fund in Paris for a few years. She started her career in finance at Goldman Sachs in 2006 in London. Earlier, Miniya worked as policy analyst with Jerome Monod, the Chief Counsellor to the President of France Jacques Chirac 2003 - 2006. Miniya is a Jury Member for the Million Dollar Global Teacher Prize and for The Circulars award that is given away each year at Davos. Miniya is a member of the parliament of Francophone writers. She is a columnist for The Indian Express and The Pioneer newspapers. Indian Instincts - essays on freedom and equality in India was Miniya’s first book. The book was published by Penguin Random House and launched in India in March 2018, then in Switzerland, Singapore and Sri Lanka and is translated in Bengali and French languages. Miniya has a PhD from Sciences Po Paris. She was a research fellow at Columbia University and Harvard University. She is a Global Leadership Fellow alumna of the World Economic Forum.
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Sophie Collet Khanna
Director
International strategy
Sophie is a higher education consultant and a former journalist. A French citizen, she has been calling Mumbai home for more than 12 years now. She launched her own consultancy, Inducation, in 2021, to support French and international higher education institutions who want to expand their presence in India (communication, PR, corporate partnerships, university partnerships, recruitment of students).
Before taking the entrepreneurship leap, Sophie worked for her alma mater Sciences Po as their India Representative for six years. She was in charge of different missions: Bachelor's, Master's and Doctorate promotion strategy, university partnerships, student exchanges, business relations, press relations, organization of events, Alumni network etc. Before that, she spent a decade working as a journalist for various publications, in France and in India.
Sophie also is a French Foreign Trade Advisor in India, which makes her part of a network of 4,500 business people and experts nominated by the French Prime Minister to promote France’s development in their respective countries. She graduated with a Masters degree from Sciences Po in 2005.

Sheik Mohamed Ishaq
Associate Director
Design
Sheik Mohamed Ishaq, is a postgraduate from the National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar. He works across the domains of information technology, academics, digital archiving, system design, marketing, editorial designing, exhibition production and more.

Vinayak Nambiar
Associate Director
Applied research
Vinayak Nambiar has pursued research and implemented projects related to environmental health in resource-poor settings in India and the Maldives. He has been an Anant Fellow for Climate Action. He has a MSc Public Health specialising in environmental health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a MSc Biomedical Engineering from Imperial College London, and B.Engg. Mechanical Engineering from The University of Nottingham.

Priyanka Agarwal
Analyst
Priyanka specialises in issues related to urban management, data modeling, and finance. She holds a Masters' degree in Management Studies from CEPT University, India.

Rhea Mukerjee
Fellow
Rhea Mukerjee has a decade of experience working across organisations that include the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development and E3G in France, and Tata Consultancy Services in India. Rhea is a self-confessed hoarder of house plants, a yoga enthusiast and a strong believer of the fact that e-books can never replace real books. She has a bachelor’s degree in economics from University of Delhi and a master’s in public affairs from Sciences Po, Paris, where she studied environmental policy.
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Nadeem Shaj
Analyst
Nadeem Shaj has a Bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from Amal Jyothi College of Engineering, and holds an IB Diploma under the International Baccalaureate Organization. A veritable citizen of the world, he has lived and studied across 5 countries that include the UAE, USA, Malaysia, Singapore, and India. He is excited about the fields of sustainability and nanotechnology, and the ways to channel research in these areas so as to have a positive impact on the future.

Joseph Rajini Asir
Creative Director
Joseph Rajini Asir is a visual artist and communications designer specialising in photography and illustration. He has over ten years of experience in the various fields of project management, photography, branding and visualisation across large and small organisations such as Amazon.com, Buzzfeed, The Ladies Compartment etc. Before Sustain Labs, he worked with the external communications department at Anant National University where he also taught courses on photography, light and visual journaling. He is currently the creative director at Sustain Labs and is responsible for designing both internal and external communication materials along with conceptualising and visualising ideas for in house research and development.
Beyond creative direction, he is engaged in researching about setting up spaces and engagements that enable free thought and self reflective engagements. He has a post graduate degree in photography from National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar, India and a bachelors degree in commerce from Loyola College, Chennai, India.

Dr. Priya Rajagopalan
Director of Research
Dr. Priya Rajagopalan, PhD, has more than 20 years of experience teaching economics, public policy, quantitative methods, and marketing at Purdue University, Krannert School of Management. She has received the highest honor from Purdue University for the undergraduate excellence in teaching. Prior to arriving at Purdue, Priya lectured at Pomona College and was also the Assistant to the President of Williams College. In 2014, she joined the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) Industry Relations as a business solutions director to support the recruitment, curriculum development, and mentorship for new businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs at Nebraska Innovation Campus. Priya’s strongest contribution to UNL was establishing partnerships with government agencies and companies and acquiring the prestigious Association of Public Land Grant University designation (APLU). She received her BA in Economics from the University of Madras and MA and PhD in Economics from Wayne State University, Michigan. She currently serves as a team member for UNL human trafficking and migration initiative.

Sandeep Kanda
Senior Expert
Carbon Markets & Corporate Sustainability
Sandeep is currently working as a Consultant at the World Bank. He has over 17 years of professional experience working with consultancies, auditing firms, NGOs and manufacturing industries. He has worked on various areas of energy and environmental management, related to policies, capacity building, climate change adaptation and mitigation projects and programmes, sustainability, auditing and product development. Sandeep has been involved in several nationally appropriate mitigation actions related work as international expert and collaborated on performing policy analysis and providing recommendations based on marginal abatement cost analysis. He has worked on the monitoring, reporting and verification aspects for emission reductions, co-benefits and support. Sandeep has been involved in various capacities in the development and assessment of more than climate change mitigation projects and programmes of activities worldwide.

Alya Tapia
Senior Manager
CEO's Foresight Team
Alya has a masters degree in environmental technology from Imperial College, UK, and an undergraduate degree in political science from Duke University, USA. Her specialization lies in the intersection of policy, business, environmental change. Her research interests cover waste, plastic pollution, and mangrove conservation in India.

Siva Sai
Associate Director
Design
Siva Sai Jeevanantham is a graduate of Photography Design from the National Institute of Design, India. He was also a student of English journalism at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication. Siva Sai started his photography practice in 2012, during which time he has explored different mediums of image-making, including alternative photography practices, archives, digital image-making.

Neha Patel
Manager, Training & Operations
Neha is a technology graduate specialising in Biotechnology, with a diploma in Cellular and Molecular Diagnostics, and a postgraduate degree in English Literature and Education. She loves to read, write, and teach, so much so that her home can pass off as a library. She previously worked at Amazon as a Team Lead for operations.

Praanjal Agarwal
Associate Director
Innovation for Impact
Praanjal has earlier worked at Reliance Industries Limited and the National Innovation Foundation-India (Government of India), where he gained diverse and extensive experience in clean energy, IPR, policy research and grassroots innovations. He specialises in the field of core Biotechnology with a Masters in the subject from Manipal University and in Business Sustainability for which he has earned a MBA from TERI School of Advanced Studies. He is a wildlife lover, cartoon enthusiast, ardent photographer, sustainable traveler and a gastronome.

Dr. Gireesh Shrimali
Senior Fellow
Dr. Gireesh Shrimali is a Research Scholar at Stanford University. He is also a visiting scholar at the Center for Climate Finance and Investment at Imperial College as well as the Singapore Green Finance Center at Singapore Management University. Previously, he was the Director of Climate Policy Initiative’s India Program, and a Research Fellow at the Sustainable Finance Initiative as well as the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University. He has taught at Johns Hopkins University, Middlebury Institute of International Studies, Indian School of Business, and Indian Institute of Management.
His research focus is on renewable energy finance and policy, on the catalytic role of finance in getting to the 2C climate target, and on pathways for provision of low-cost, long-term capital for clean energy transition. His work has included topics such as analysis of India’s renewable policies, the impact of federal and state policy on the development and deployment of renewable energy in the USA, and business models for off-grid energy in developing countries. He is also focusing on ESG issues, such as climate financial risk measurement and management, strategies for net zero transitions, and transition bonds as well as Scope 3 emissions.
He holds a PhD from Stanford University, an MS from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and a BTech from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. Prior to his academic/research career, he has over nine years of industry experience designing high-speed networking and computing systems.

Erica Dorr
Senior fellow
Erica Dorr started her academic career at the University of Berkeley (United States) where she graduated in ecology and environmental biology. She then continued her studies at the University of Paris Saclay with a master’s in climate, land use and ecosystem services. She is interested in the development of food systems that are more environmentally sustainable and fairer from a social point of view. She is currently a doctoral student at AgroParisTech and is working on the environmental impacts of urban agriculture and the development of a simplified assessment tool. As part of her doctoral project, she uses the life-cycle assessment method. Her research interests also cover sustainability sciences, urban ecology and industrial ecology.

Faraz Kazi
Analyst
Faraz Kazi specializes in the field of environmental engineering and has a Master's degree in the subject. He is interested in all things related to sustainability and life cycle assessments of products and services.

Chirag Jain
Research Associate
Chirag Jain started his career as a practising advocate before the Supreme Court of India. He has wide experience in providing litigation, regulatory and policy advisory services to a diverse range of clients. His focus in the past few years has been towards strategic environmental litigation. He is currently pursuing his LL.M. from Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne. His focus during his tenure at Melbourne Law School has been on subjects related to Business & Human Rights and Sustainable International Finance. He holds a BBA LL.B. (Hons) from India.

Sanjukta Bhattacharya
Research Associate
Sanjukta is currently pursuing her undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Jodhpur. She is passionate about sustainability and making a positive impact on society. She is dedicated to using her skills to make a meaningful difference in the world. Pertaining to her background, she also pursues her research in algorithmic game theory.
Our Work





























We Teach What We Practice

We set up a course in 2017 on Creating Sustainable Businesses for Masters level students at SciencesPo Paris, which our founder, Dr. Miniya Chatterji has been teaching since the past 3 years. This course is taught at 2 prestigious schools at SciencesPo - Paris School of International Affairs and the School of International Management and Sustainability. Till date, Sustain Labs has taught and trained 300 international students on how to create sustainable businesses.

As part of the Naropa Fellowship in Ladakh, Sustain Labs trains local entrepreneurs every year on how to create sustainable businesses. Since 2019, we have trained more than 120 local entrepreneurs in the Himalayan Region.
We Work Globally
India
M-611 Jal Vayu Towers
Sector 56,
Gurgaon, India - 122011
UAE
The Binary by Omniyat
Business Bay, 2101-57,
Dubai,U.A.E.
New Zealand
1346 Dominion Road
Mount Roskill
Auckland, New Zealand 1041