
Would you like to dine with the change-makers of tomorrow? Are you a passionate follower of sustainable ideologies, with strong views about veganism, zero-waste, climate change, and other global issues? Then we have just the thing for you!
The Melton Foundation will be hosting a Civic Dinner – a dinner to have a meaningful, productive discourse about issues that matter! Attendees will be joined by table hosts – passionate change-makers and innovation-leaders who will guide them through the nuances of several selected global issues- and also by carefully selected delegates and Melton Fellows from other countries, like Ghana, China, Germany, and Chile.
Curious to know more? Watch this short video from our last Civic Dinner in Bengaluru, India!
Civic Dinners allow you to intimately discuss the different aspects of global issues – and have impactful conversations with other individuals to find real, effective solutions.
Civic Dinners works with cities, regions, nonprofits and thought leaders to design and manage community conversations. With our first-of-its-kind collaboration, we are thrilled to be partnering with Civic Dinners to bring the conversation to the vibrant city of New Orleans, Louisiana!
Join us at the table!
Our Civic Dinner table hosts at our previous Civic Dinner: Emerging leaders in Sustainability - from Bangalore and around the world!
Meet Sandeep Anirudhan
Volunteer for Life
Read BioMeet Chirag S. Rao
Team Hasiru
Read BioMeet Mrudula Joshi
UllisuByMrudula
Read BioMeet Kwabena Twumasi Ankrah
The Controversy Court
Read BioMeet Akshata Bhadranna
Dopolgy
Read BioMeet Ziqi Zhou
Media and Marketing - London School of Economics
Read BioMeet Nickhil Sharma
Head of Operations, Abicart India
Read BioMeet Neli Blum
Melton Foundation and RAA Leizpig
Read BioMeet Rajath R Dani
Product Manager and Artificial Intelligence Researcher
Read BioMeet Divija Lahe
Corporate Social Responsibility Advisor and Sustainability Advocate
Read BioMeet Pedro Poblete Lasserre
Social-Community Psychologist and Vice chair of the Board of Directors, Melton Foundation
Read BioMeet Devina Singh
FairTrade India
Read BioVolunteer for Life
Sandeep Anirudhan is a ‘volunteer for life’ – founder and core-team member of 8 movements, and an active member of at least 10 more, all of them, in the domain of sustainability and citizen engagement.
A former serial entrepreneur and management professional, a chance encounter with death made Sandeep Anirudhan revisit all these life choices. Ever since, he has been building money-free and organization-free voluntary communities to address the challenges of our times such as sustainability, learning, awareness, citizen engagement and action, natural farming, water security, lake conservation, forest conservation, restoration and renewal of our ecosystems and habitats, and many more… Through all of these, he has been trying to generate a conscious living on our planet, in our society and our communities.
Find out more about Sandeep’s communities and his incredible work in Civic Action at bit.ly/Change-Agent.
Team Hasiru
Chirag S. Rao is one of the founder trustees of Team Hasiru – a registered, non-profit, working for a Cleaner and Greener Bangalore.
Team Hasiru devises projects and events which are result-oriented and whose primary focus is Nature and Society. Team Hasiru has undertaken more than 15+ large scale Environmental drives and Societal Welfare drives in 2+ years and are also official facilitators for the 1 crore plantation drive within Karnataka state by the year 2020.
UllisuByMrudula
Mrudula started journaling her lifestyle changes on Instagram under the name “Ullisu” to explore all the boundaries of sustainable choices one could make. In the effort to communicate her progress to everyone, she noticed how some are more likely to change than others. Thus, she began studying the possible socio-psychological factors behind the gap that exists in passionate members of the environmental movement and the rest of the world.
Since then, Mrudula is on a quest to create a platform where anyone can feel capable of making drastic changes to live a sustainable lifestyle.
The Controversy Court
Kwabena Twumasi Ankrah is a Fellow of the Melton Foundation and a Senior at Ashesi University reading a B.Sc in Business Administration.
He is the founder of Abofra – an Early childhood education mobile application for children in urban slums and the Creator & Moderator for the Controversy Court – a liberal platform that promotes inclusion, diversity, authenticity and positive action through discussions of sensitive and “taboo” issues on continental Africa.
Dopolgy
Akshata is a marketing professional who is passionate about Environment and planet earth. Co-founder of Dopolgy, she is currently living an eco-friendly lifestyle and aspires to be zero-waste in the next 5 years. With a dream to inspire many to turn eco-friendly, she is working on workshops to create awareness.
She is a bibliophile, a feminist, traveler and a blogger. You can connect with her on @opinionatedmua on Twitter and Instagram.
Media and Marketing - London School of Economics
Ziqi Zhou studied journalism in Zhejiang University and Media and communication in London School of Economics. Spending 5 years in institutions famous for engineering and social entrepreneurship, and working for top technology companies in both China and United Kingdom, she learned how to incorporate her expertise of communication with technology, to help engineers with empathy thinking with wider audience, and to tell stories about technology that’s accessible to anyone with or without a technical background.
Head of Operations, Abicart India
Nickhil is a 27-year-old Energy Engineer from Delhi/Bangalore, India. He currently calls Göteborg, Sweden his home, and works as a business head for a Swedish e-commerce platform working for small and medium businesses in India. He gets to work with incredible, talented people from both these countries.
During his Master’s Nickhil explored several sustainability topics and developed a passion for them. One of his most rewarding experiences was working with the Swedish Transport Department and other stakeholders in the transportation sector to understand and envision the future of transportation in that part of the world. He hopes for an integrated, green, equitable and accessible transportation and more importantly that more and more people realize the true cost of transportation.
Melton Foundation and RAA Leizpig
Neli enjoys facilitating self-reflection through a systemic counseling mindset as well as creating new ideas for social innovations. After coordinating a global start-up providing culturally sensitive sex-education through social web-app, Neli joined RAA Leizpig e.V., an NGO driving intercultural and educational projects in Leizpig, Germany, where she leads the new project HeRoes. Here she found the perfect mix of her passion: HeRoes is a peer-to-peer feminist education project empowering boys to promote gender equality and “stand up against oppression in the name of honor”. A Senior Fellow of the Melton Foundation, she also offers participatory design consulting for NGOs and civil society organizations.
Neli holds a Master Degree in social work and social management from Friedrich Schiller Universität. A yoga session in the morning is a must for her!
Product Manager and Artificial Intelligence Researcher
Rajath is an Entrepreneur, Product Manager and Artificial Intelligence Researcher has 2+ years of experience with technology in retail and is currently a Researcher at IISc. He’s worked at an Indian Startup that helped brands make better decisions in their product life cycle in the second most polluting industry in the world, that is, Fashion. He’s built software products ground up and leveraged Artificial Intelligence to solve problems in retail and education. He is passionate and optimistic about the large role technology can play in solving pressing problems today.
He’s passionate about food and sharing ideas and knowledge which makes the Civic Dinner a great place to catch him at his prime.
Corporate Social Responsibility Advisor and Sustainability Advocate
Divija is an individual passionate about sustainability, nature, people and making friends with change & time. With an academic background in Economics and a professional background in Corporate Social Responsibility, I wish to connect with likeminded people and organizations that make the world a better place to live in – by using collective thought, synergy and collaboration.
Social-Community Psychologist and Vice chair of the Board of Directors, Melton Foundation
Pedro is a social scientist and engineer interested in the intersection of technology and human development. He works as a freelancer for NGOs and social projects and as a clinical psychologist for young people in Chile. He has previously worked in multiple NGOs and research institutions in Chile, Canada, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Uganda, and Germany. He holds a Master of Science in Human-Technology Interaction from Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands) and a Bachelor in Psychology from Universidad de la Frontera (Chile).
Pedro currently serves as the Vice-Chair of the Board of Directors of the Melton Foundation.
FairTrade India
Read about our first Networking Dinner and get exclusive insight into our learnings from our evening in India!