Transcendence 2024

tracks to be featured at transcendence 2024

Indicative conversation threads for Transcendence 2024

Women, Livelihoods, and The Circular Economy – the roles of Community, Policy and Compliance in SDG goal pursuits

What are the ways in which Just Transitions impact women’s participation in energy production or sourcing scenarios?
How is it important for producers to make products themselves sustainable so that the economy can attain a circular pattern?
What are the cultural variables that prevent SDG success? How do we know that they occur as challenges? How do ethics come into such a culture?
How are known skills or patterned learning among stakeholders coming in the way of viable livelihoods?
How are price-sensitive economies impacting consumer habits in the midst of sustainability goals? What are the anchors of these habits?

Environment (Soil, Water, Air) Habitats, Climate Change and Human Health – Interlinkages and Blind spots

How does human behaviour impact the conservation of forests, flora and fauna? How do we know that these are reported or disclosed today?
How does climate change impact habitats and human adaptation?
What are symptoms observed in health systems that trace land use patterns and human farming practices? What human systems do they call into attention?
What may consumers need to awaken to so that soils/waters/air can support sustainable societies?
What can be learned from the COVID-19 experience about immunity management in sustainable societies?

EXPECTED OUTCOMES
To enlist support beyond the conventional idea of organisational identity or brand extension in sustainability is to acknowledge our shared fates and explore collaboration in actions that elevate the chances of SDG success. Authentic sharing would be required to inform the research agenda regarding human behaviours. Industry and Community practitioners need answers to Why and How People behave or act the way they do in contexts in and around India when faced with Sustainability goals.

Do humans reflexively resist climate-friendly behaviours as habits of convenience, or do humans not perceive the threats in adequate threshold strengths to take SDG-relevant actions?
Would sustainability imply a shift in how we conceive of possessions, for example, in making transitions toward public transport options from private vehicle ownership?
For what reasons, in developing or emerging economies, do people trivialize critical criteria, such as plastic waste, that precipitate apathy toward the earth’s environment?
How may penalties and statutory norms (e.g., on vehicle emission norms) have a dysfunctional impact on enlightened volunteerism in consumer behaviour?
Have business corporations sensed that their traditional scopes of enterprise controls and coordination would need a different adaptation beyond their boundaries to address sustainability crises?

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Voices at Transcendence

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Dr. Bhanumathi Kalluri

Development Practitioner working on intersections of Gender and Environment Justice

Bhanumathi Kalluri is Director at Dhaatri Trust (www.dhaatri.org), an NGO working on the intersections of gender, women's rights and environmental justice. Her work spans a period of 32 years that was for the most part, spent in remote forest areas, living and working with Adivasi/Tribal/Indigenous communities. Her work has mainly focussed on strengthening women's leadership and collaboration to promote their traditional indigenous knowledge practices, natural resources management and entitlements.

Dr. Manu V. Mathai

Finding justice in human well-being outcomes on a finite planet.

Manu V. Mathai studies the political economy of Development and development alternatives as expressed in energy infrastructure choice and its implications for finding justice in human well-being outcomes, on a shared and finite planet. He has written widely on this theme, and has held faculty positions at universities in India, Japan and the United States. His current work is on the political economy of production-consumption systems as it relates to sufficiency and to critical minerals.

Mr. Sujay Dinnalli

Researcher-practitioner focussed on transdisciplinary approaches to systems change

A researcher-practitioner applying systemic and cybernetic methods to social purposes, organisations and change. Mr. Sujay Dinnalli is broadly interested in systemic and cybernetic accounts of ‘the individual in society’, and ‘the society in the individual’. His practice is focussed on helping social-purpose organisations maximise potential, enabling inclusive policymaking and stakeholders seeing better representation.

Mr. Shankar Jaganathan

Advocate for a fair and equitable world where resources are respected

After a decade of spending time on research, writing and teaching in the areas of finance. Mr. Shankar Jaganathan started Cimplyfive Corporate Secretarial Services Private Limited, with the vision to 'Eliminating procedural non-compliance for entities incorporated under the Indian Companies Act, 2013'.

Mr. Shridhar Rajgopalan

Sustainability leader creating Technology led Digital Inclusive and Sustainable Livelihood Solutions

Mr. Shridhar Rajgopalan leads the sustainability agenda for ATCI to create value for the clients, employees, and the community. He has also worked on the technology-led transformation to help underprivileged women create and sustain micro businesses.

Dr (Col). Rajeev Kumar

Strategic Communication expert: Co-Author " Outlast - How ESG can Benefit your Business"

Dr. (Col.) Rajeev Kumar served in an Indian Military career - Colonel (Infantry). Apart from this, he worked as a Faculty at the Defence Services Staff College, Wellington, India. He was a Fulbright Doctoral fellow at Texas A&M and holds a PhD in Organizational Communication. He also served as a Head of Learning and Development at Larsen and Toubro. Currently, he is serving as a consultant in Strategic Communication Management and also a visiting Faculty at IIM Ahmedabad.

Mr. Biju Dominic

Focuses on the Non- Conscious Barriers and Triggers of Human Behaviour

Mr. Biju Dominic co-founded FinalMile Consulting along with Ram, Anand and Anurag, three people who are smarter than me. At FinalMile he believes that absorption of new knowledge happens only if we have courage the burn one’s past knowledge. He also believes that dissemination of new knowledge is possible only if we develop new processes. Additionally, at Fractal, he is playing the new game that is emerging at the intersection of human and machine intelligence.

Mr. Srinivas Alavilli

Fellow WRI India; Trying to get people to switch from #Personal2Public

Mr. Srinivas Alavilli just started with Janaagraha Center for Citizenship and Democracy focused on transforming our cities for the better by enabling citizen participation in local governance, enhancing transparency and accountability using technology and ground action. He worked on Jaga Mission, award winning project to transform Odisha into slum free state with the @Housing and Urban Development Department, Government of Odisha, and Swachhata Technology Platform, the digital interface to Swachh Bharath Mission, City Leaders Programme, a unique initiative by Janaagraha to build capacity of local elected representatives.

Mr. Paneesh Rao

Chief Sustainability Officer | Mentor | HR Analyst | Registered Independent Director with Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs

Paneesh Rao is a senior leader with more than three decades of experience in managing human resources across industries and geographies. In his current role, he drives LTIMindtree’s ESG commitment, vital to the company’s vision of balancing growth and sustainability in building long-term stakeholder value, including for the society at large. He also leads the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) program.

Mr. Prabhjot Sodhi

Senior Programme Director, Centre for Environment Education

Mr. Prabhjot Sodhi,MBE is Senior Program Director (Circular Economy) at Centre for Environment Education & Director MRAI and Former Head UNDP Circular Economy. Mr. Sodhi has a diversified experience in leading and implementing projects in a wide range of areas – plastic waste management to climate change, natural resources, land development to livelihoods of poor, and marginalized in the tribal, rural and urban spaces for the last 40 years. He is a passionate, open and reflective individual.

Mr. Subhasis Ray

Professor Xavier Institute of Management Bhubaneswar (XIMB)

Prof. Subhasis Ray has 28 years of work experience in corporate and academia along with 8 years in strategy & business development for leading MNCs in emerging markets- BP, HILTI and the TATA group. Apart from this, he has 20 years academic experience including teaching and speaking on marketing, sustainability and CSR in 25 countries including Yale, INSEAD, Harvard Business School, Cornell & Darden.

Ms. Lubaina Rangwala

Program Head, Urban Development and Resilience, WRI India.

Lubaina is Program Head, Urban Development and Resilience with the Sustainable Cities and Transport team at WRI India. She has been associated with the institute for nine years. Her current work focuses on green infrastructure projects, nature-based solutions to address long-term climate risk in Indian cities, and working with vulnerable communities to build their resilience capacities. She is currently involved in climate action plans, disaster management and flood mitigation measures in Indian cities.

Mr. Anuj Sharma

Founder, ALSiSAR IMPACT

Mr. Nikhil Nath

CFA, FRM, CAIA, CIPM Sustainable Investing

Mr. NE Sridhar

A graduate in Mechanical Engineering and M Tech from Indian Statistical Institute , Kolkata , N E Sridhar joined Titan Company Limited after a brief stint in an automotive company. Currently, he heads the Corporate Sustainability Function at Titan. As part of the current portfolio that spans the entire organisation he handles Climate change / Sustainability, Business Excellence, Occupational Health and safety, Corporate Social Responsibility and Affirmative Action. He has set many path breaking initiatives , and notable among them in CSR/AA (besides other verticals) has been creation of a sustainability policy and an inclusive CSR policy many years back spanning Girl child / women, PwD and also AA.

Mr. Rohan Sharma

Social Scientist and Convenor, Expert - National ESG Standards Drafting Committee, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS).

ROHAN SHARMA is a SOCIAL SCIENTIST whose broad area of work has been to understand and analyse the dynamic relationship between BUSINESS AND SOCIETY. As a young leader who has steered several Government of India initiatives, rohan has demonstrated dexterity in participatory RESEARCH and DEVELOPMENT PLANNING with vulnerable communities as well as strategic management consulting with business leaders in India. As a CHANGE MANAGEMENT specialist, rohan continues to provide STRATEGIC COUNSEL to public sector and private sector leaders in India through RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS policy and programme formulation and developing FRAMEWORKS ON CSR AND SUSTAINABILITY.

Dr. Bhaskar Chatterjee

Former DG Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs. Currently, CEO Anil Agarwal Foundation (Vedanta Group)

Dr.Bhaskar Chatterjee is widely acclaimed as the Father of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in India. He was instrumental in framing and issuing the CSR guidelines for Public Sector Enterprises (PSEs) in April, 2010. Dr. Chatterjee in his current role as Senior Director at the Indian PRME Champion Business School – IILM Institute for Higher Education, New Delhi – is closely associated with the Sustainable Development Goals and the Principles of Responsible Management Education. He coordinates closely with the United Nations Global Compact and with other Institutes and Business Schools in India which espouse the cause of Responsible Management Education.

Manish Srivastava

Senior Faculty for the UN SDG Leadership Labs and Co-Director of Social Presencing Theatre (SPT), Presencing Institute

Manish has been involved in designing and facilitating multi-stakeholder change labs in India, Africa, South-East Asia, Europe, the US, etc. He integrates poetry, contemplative art and systems thinking to help leaders collectively sense, own and transform societal divides. His work on “Systems Transformation through Social Art” has been featured at the Inner Development Goal (IDG) Summit in 2022 and 23, the PI Global Forum in 2021 and the Conflict Transformation Summit in 2020. Manish was the recipient of the Creative Therapy Awards 2023 for poetry by Sancheti Health Academy for his work on healing collective trauma related to a pandemic, migrant crisis and gender conflicts. Manish brings 25 years of leadership journey in the field of systems transformation and sustainability.

Sankarasubramanyan Ramamoorthy

Director, ChangeWorks (Facilitator)

Sankarsubramanyam Sankar worked in HR functions with organizations like Citicorp Overseas Software Ltd (COSL- a fully owned subsidiary of Citibank), PRT (Barbados) Ltd and Larsen & Toubro. He handled different portfolios in HR and his last job was International HR Director. He is currently the Director of Changeworks Consulting Services Private Limited. Sankar has significant involvement in the social sector globally and in India. He has consulted with Greenpeace International, The International Union for the Fight against TB and lung disease and WHO for leadership development. He has also consulted with many well-known non-Governmental organizations in India.

Dinni Lingaraj

Sr. Advisor Sustainability, Wipro Foundation

Dinni is a Senior Advisor with the ESG – Sustainability team at Wipro. He has worked closely in conceptualising the environmental program related to GHG accounting and mitigation, water efficiency and biodiversity - as well as working with HR, procurement, investor relations, risk and other functions. He has also lead the urban ecology and environmental education program. The urban ecology program works mainly in integrating a science based understanding to water management in cities and integrating climate resilience. He is also associated with a new venture which aims to accelerate adoption of sustainable choices at a local level.

Srijit Mishra

Srijit Mishra, PhD, is Professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai, Deemed to be University, an advanced research institute established by the Reserve Bank of India, and was the Dean of Academic and Student Affairs from Oct 2021 to Sep 2023. During his Deanship, IGIDR was for the first time featured in QS World University Ranking in Subjects for Development Studies and was ranked 100-120. He was formerly the Director of Nabakrushna Choudhury Centre for Development Studies (NCDS), an Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) institute set-up in collaboration with the Government of Odisha (11 Sep 2015-10 Sep 2020) where he was instrumental in spearheading the Odisha Millets Mission

Debartha Banerjee

Debartha Banerjee serves as one of the Co-Founders and Directors of Sampurn(e)arth. He is an engineer and completed Masters in Social Entrepreneurship from Tata Institute of Social Sciences. He has a keen interest in Worker cooperatives, Technology & Innovation, Sustainable Development, and Social Entrepreneurship. Sampurn(e)arth founded in 2012 is built on the vision of a world where waste is transformed into utilizable resources without exploitation of people or the planet. It works with the Government, Communities, and Informal waste markets. Sampurn(e)arth runs and manages dry waste collection and Plastic recycling facilities across the country to process plastics and other categories of Dry waste in association with Municipal Bodies while mainstreaming the informal markets forming waste-pickers and other informal workers.

Anveshi Gutta

A practitioner, advisor and a lifetime learner on ESG and Sustainability, Mr. Anveshi Gutta, has been a TEDx speaker and keynote speaker on multiple platforms. He comes with more than 2 decades of industry experience across technology and consulting organizations, including PwC, IBM, HP among others. He is currently on the Technical Committee at The ESG Exchange, working with global experts to help Corporates build the competencies and skills on sustainability. He is the CEO of At Quest Sustainable Solutions, a company that has taken up the tough challenge to drive institutional and individual mindset shifts. His company's approach to integrate ESG along with institutional culture has earned recognitions globally including the Everest Group's 2023 Peak Matrix, Asia Business Outlook's Top 10 listing in Asia, APAC Insider's South Asia winner in 2022 and 2023. Anveshi is identified by Linkedin as a Top Voice on Corporate Sustainabiilty.

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WELCOME TO THE 4th EDITION OF TRANSCENDENCE

Theme: "Unpacking Sustainability-Oriented Behaviours"