Meet the Team

Meet the team behind Urban Thottam – Chennai Resilience Centre!

Krishna Mohan Ramachandran

Chief Resilience Officer, Chennai City

Krish was appointed Chief Resilience Officer in July of 2017. He led the development of Chennai’s Resilience Strategy which was launched in June of 2019. The strategy defined specific actions that city governance and other stakeholders could take to address Chennai’s most pressing challenges, thereby building city resilience and paving the way towards an enlightened, just and integrated future.

Krish leads the Chennai Resilience Centre, a unit of Care Earth Trust, fostered by the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Centre (AARFRC) and the Resilient Cities Network (RCN). He is involved with two flagship projects being implemented in the city in collaboration with government, civil society, academia and corporates, ‘Urban Farming’ and ‘Water as Leverage’. Both these projects build the city’s resilience in critical areas — Food & Water Security, Urban Heat Mitigation and Livelihood Generation among the urban poor.

In his previous avatar, Krish spent three decades in advertising, a large part of which was at Ogilvy, where he was President of the Madras and Hyderabad Offices, before retiring as National Head of Training and Talent. In his spare time, Krish writes the occasional song, is a passionate Oarsman and loves retreating to his small organic farm in the Palni Hills.

Dr Parama Roy

Lead Researcher, Advisor

Dr. Parama Roy is trained as an urban geographer. She completed her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is interested in the multifaceted and complex nature of urbanization process and its social and environmental implications. Her work is motivated by principles of socio-environmental justice and sustainable development. Dr. Roy has worked at Georgia State University (USA) and University of Copenhagen (Denmark) before joining Okapi Research & Advisory in Chennai in 2017. She also holds an Adjunct Faculty position at IIT-Madras. She has published widely in international peer reviewed journals like Urban Affairs Review, City, and Geoforum on topics of collaborative planning and community gardening as urban planning strategies.

She joined the Resilient Chennai team in 2018 and helped develop the Chennai Resilience Strategy supported by Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities program. This work involved comprehensive research and broad stakeholder engagement across Chennai to identify city’s vulnerabilities specifically in the areas of Water, Disaster, Governance, Vulnerable Communities, and Urbanization. Since the launch of the Chennai City Resilience Strategy in June 2019, Dr. Roy has continued to work with Chennai Resilience Center as a lead researcher and advisor.

Akshaya Ayyangar

Research Associate

Akshaya is a Senior Research Associate at the Chennai Resilience Centre. Akshaya has around eight years of experience in urban development, specifically around water and sanitation, solid waste management, urban resilience and climate change. She has been associated with CRC since 2018, helping to develop the city’s first resilience strategy and now taking the strategy forward. She is interested in the linkages between urbanisation, society and the environment, specifically water, equity and justice issues associated with urban environmental governance and access, inequalities linked to urban heat impact and resilience of urban food systems. Akshaya has Master’s degree in Environmental Policy and Management from the University of Bristol, UK.

Contact: akshaya@resilientchennai.com

Ramamoorthy

Project Facilitator

Ramamoorthy comes with a rich experience of working as Subordinate Officer in Central Government Departments such as the Indian Coast Guard, Narcotics Control Bureau and Chennai Airport. He has been an integral part of the project execution team at Care Earth Trust and Chennai Resilience Centre.

Srimathi Balasubramani

Project Coordinator

Srimathi is Project Coordinator at CRC, helping to coordinate between beneficiaries and ensuring that they access nutritious food from their kitchen gardens. Srimathi’s background is in social work which she graduated in. She is very much concerned about working with vulnerable communities and developing sustainably. She is actively trying to avoid using plastics in day-to-day activities and chose to do her internship at ‘Vaanagam-Nammalvar ecological farm’ where she learnt about organic farming and sustainable living. Srimathi has previously worked as a coordinator of a homeless shelter for children typically rescued from the Kodugaiyur dump yard in north Chennai. In her spare time, she works actively to improve rights and living conditions of rag pickers and their children.

Rohit M

Jr. Communications Consultant

Rohit M is a Junior Communications Consultant at CRC and helps create and manage content for the social media platforms. He has a background in History and Sociology, and is interested in finding out how urban communities adapt to environmental change. He is currently working as a researcher in Perumbakkam, a resettlement site, to understand the local impacts of climate change as well as the community’s response to them.

Vishnupriya

Program Facilitator

Vishnupriya is an Architect who graduated from MEASI Academy of Architecture in 2018. Her final year thesis was selected as one among top 50 graduate theses among 587 submissions across the world in the Tamayouz Graduation Thesis Awards longlist. She would like to pursue graduate studies in Planning. Her subjects of interest include Community Development, Social Equity, Inclusivity, Diversity Planning, to name a few. She is interested in Urban Design, specifically in the design of public spaces. She currently works as a Program Facilitator with Chennai Resilience Centre. She is involved in research to help develop the ‘Urban Thottam’ website with information about various crops that can be cultivated in urban farms in the city. She cares for the environment and about sustainable causes and her work with CRC helps her fulfill her interests in this area.

Anjana Vencatesan

Research Associate

Anjana Vencatesan is a Research Associate with the Chennai Resilience Centre. Anjana has formerly worked with a global risk consultancy in New Delhi and a biodiversity and conservation NGO in Chennai. She is a Masters in International Security from the Paris School of International Affairs, Sciences Po and specializes in Global Risks and the South Asian region.

Urmika Venkateshwaran

Urmika Venkateshwaran has a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering from SRM Easwari Engineering College, Chennai. Alongside pursuing her degree, she has worked on her passion for the environment, procuring an Indian Green Building Council Accredited Professional credential, working with IIT Madras and co-authoring a paper on the treatment of urban wastewaters using electrochemical advanced oxidation processes. She is also associated with The Rain Centre, an NGO that aids in the construction and maintenance of Rainwater Harvesting units in Chennai. Her research interests include water management, solid waste management, alternate construction materials, renewable energy and green buildings.

Aparnaa K K

Aparnaa was an intern at CRC. She has a bachelor’s degree in Computer and Data Engineering from City University, Hong Kong. As a data analyst and passionate researcher, using analytics to study the various issues of the society excites her. At CRC she as worked on the ‘Islands of Hope’ project, an initiative to identify organizations/individuals striving to make an impact in society and popularising their work and continues to work on wider spectrum of initiatives. Her research interests include urbanisation and climate change.

Acknowledgements

We extend our sincere thanks and appreciation to all our advisors and consultants, in acknowledgement of their invaluable contributions during the development of the Urban Thottam website.

Expert Consultants

Mrs. K. Parimala, Sempulam Sustainable Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Dr. Vijayalakshmi, Sempulam Sustainable Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Mr Subramaniam, Sempulam Sustainable Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
Mr Alladi Mahadevan, The Organic Farm

Mr. Karthik, Tamil Nadu Department of Horticulture and Plantation Crops
Ms. Kalpana, Kalpavriksha Farm
Dr. Sekar Raghavan, The Rain Centre

Chennai Resilience Centre Associates

Arjun Bhargava (Former Resilience Manager, Chennai Resilience Centre)
Sarvesh Ashok

Nived Dharmaraj
Kothai Narayanan
Divya KrishnaMohan

Urban Horticulture Program Consultants

A. Janakiraman, M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation
Archana M., The Magic Bean
Archana Stalin, MyHarvest
Balchand Parayath, Chennai City Connect
K. Kumar, Parks Department, GCC
Kavitha Ramakrishnan, The Magic Bean
L. Krishnamurthy, Resident Welfare rep. Shenoy Nagar, Chennai
M.V. Ramachandran, Resident Welfare rep. T.Nagar, Chennai
N. Parasuraman, M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation
N.M. Mythreyan, Indra Gardens
P. Immanuel, Dep. Director of Horticulture, Chennai
Priya Gopalen, The Magic Bean

S. Kasiviswanathan, Parks Department, GCC
S. Sanjana, M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation
S. Sathyanarayanan, Organic Terrace Garden Family Group
S. Senthilkumar, TN Corporation for Development of Women
S. Snekalatha, National Urban Livelihoods Mission (NULM) Chennai
Satish Menon, Resident, Shenoy Nagar, Chennai
Sheela Devi, Horticulture Department
Sivasubramaniam, TN Corporation for Development of Women
Sriram Gopal, Future Farms
V. Jayachandran, Parks Department, GCC
V. Sukumar, Parks Department, GCC
Yogalakshmi, Indra Gardens

Student Contributors

Adolfo Castro, Yale-NUS College
Aneesh J, IIT Madras
Elankovan Gopal, IIT Madras
Jin Hee Lee, Yale-NUS College
Julia Higson, University of British Columbia
Junior Duplessis, University of British Columbia
Kareena Mehta, IIT Madras
Rachel Cheang, University of British Columbia

Nitish Gera
Minji Lee
Jenna Lessans
Michael Rooney
Garima Jalota
Madhuri Kashyap
Nate Grady
Sashi Konda