Adya Siddarth

A results-driven, committed, and innovative social development professional with strong expertise in leveraging the power of technology and human potential for greater impact in projects and organizations. Proven cross-functional collaborator with a diverse background in global organizations, including the United Nations, NGOs, corporations, tech start-ups, educational institutions, and government.

• Paper on “Transforming Higher Education towards Sustainability and Wellbeing” submitted and selected for conference – INFRACON 2019, India
• Co-authored a paper: Virtual Coast Guard: An Open and Crowdsourced GIS Portal for Stewardship of India's Coast, published in Transactions in GIS, Wiley Online Library, 2012
• Participated and presented master’s thesis at a 3-day symposium, “Rethinking Informal Labour in Globalizing and Urbanizing Contexts” organized by Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) and Centre for Policy Research (CPR) in January 2012, in Chennai
• Created maps and contributed content on Mundra Case Study for “The Challenged Coast of India”, a report prepared by PondyCAN, Bombay Natural History Society and TISS in Oct 2012
• Presented a paper, representing TCS Innovation Labs, on a regional language generator tool in the ‘Mobile for Masses’ segment at Manthan Awards 2009, Delhi.

TELC Certificate (B1)

1. Designed and conducted a state-level rapid survey on SDG 3: Good Health and Wellbeing in Tamilnadu. Delivered a status report “SDG3: Good Health and Well-being SDGwatch Status Report Tamil Nadu 2020 (People with disabilities during the pandemic)”.

Link to report: https://india.tracking-progress.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2021/04/SDG-3-Health-Nutrition.pdf

2. Initiated and co-authored two-part articles for Krishi Janani’s Medium blog.

Links to articles:

https://medium.com/krishi-janani/janani-regenerative-marketplace-un-sustainable-development-goals-sdg-132d6ddfe863

https://medium.com/krishi-janani/translating-un-sdgs-into-jananis-business-activities-858c8ad9c9ff

3. Functioned as a rapporteur at the Higher Education for Sustainability (HES 2020) event organised by the Copernicus Alliance, University of Bern and other institutions. Delivered a report based on the proceedings of the Poster Plaza session.

Link to report: https://uploads.strikinglycdn.com/files/78064503-1113-4129-89a8-2f8216a37bbb/HES2020_Poster%20Plaza%20Report.pdf

4. Wrote a paper on “Transforming Higher Education towards Sustainability and Wellbeing” which was selected for INFRACON 2019 conference.

5. Designed and co-facilitated a transformational site analysis studio for 3rd year students from RVS Architecture college in 2016. Developed this as a case study towards transforming higher education for sustainable development.

Link to case study: https://tinyurl.com/3cvwrrkk

6. Featured as a guest speaker on Dr. Monica Sharma’s podcast show ‘Radical Transformational Leadership’.

Link to podcast episode: https://dreamvisions7radio.com/radical-transformational-leadership-what-does-this-imply-guest-speaker-adya-siddarth/

7. Featured as a guest speaker in the webinar “Higher Education: Cultivating Responsible Citizenry” organised by RTLWorks and Dr. Monica Sharma in 2020

8. Developed a beta version of a web GIS portal for mapping and analysis of coastal data across the country using open source software. Created maps and contributed content on Mundra Case Study for “The Challenged Coast of India”, a report prepared by PondyCAN in collaboration with BNHS and TISS. October 2012. The report and portal was presented at 11th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biodiversity in India in October 2012 at a side event titled ’Coastal And Marine Biodiversity And Coastal Area Management’

Link to Report: https://admin.indiawaterportal.org/sites/default/files/iwp2/the_challenged_coasts_of_india_october2012.pdf

9. Co-authored and published a paper based on the methodology and approach of leveraging free and open source technology for coastal stewardship - Virtual Coast Guard: An Open and Crowdsourced GIS Portal for Stewardship of India's Coast, Alpesh Gajbe, Adya Shankar and Sudarshan Rodriguez, Transactions in GIS, Volume 18, Issue 4, pages 544–554, August 2014, Wiley Online Library

Link to publication: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tgis.12066

10. Attended a meeting organised by GEF-GoI-UNDP project on “Developing an effective multiple use management framework for conserving biodiversity in the mountain landscape of the High Ranges, the Western Ghats, India” in Dehradun in September 2014. Made a presentation on using visualisations to simplify the complex by translating their project document into a visual presentation.