Sandhya Naidu Janardhan

Sandhya Naidu Janardhan, is the Founder and Managing Director of Community Design Agency (CDA), a Mumbai based social enterprise working towards a world where everyone enjoys vibrant, safe and healthy spaces to live, work and play. At CDA, she has led the creation of spaces that are foundational to climate-resiliency, gender, economic, and social inclusion, health and overall wellbeing, thereby catalysing generational change for communities across 4 Indian cities.

Sandhya believes that spatial equity is inextricably linked to dismantling systemic issues including gender, social and health inequity, climate vulnerability, economic inclusion and identity. And that sustained impact is only achieved when those affected have true agency and voice over where and how they live. To this end, she developed proven participatory processes and methodologies with the communities she served, rooting them in intentional listening and empathy.

Licensed and educated in India, Sandhya is a graduate of Columbia University’s GSAPP. Her subsequent 15-year career spans multiple countries and the commercial and non-profit sectors. Ranging from landscape architecture for a Singapore-based interdisciplinary design firm, and post-earthquake reconstruction in Haiti for a US-based non-profit.  Sandhya is a TED India Fellow, a Young Climate Prize Design Champion and more recently, is the recipient of the 2024-25 Berkeley Rupp prize for outstanding female architects working in the social sphere.