Rajiv Ramchandra

Rajiv Ramchandra is the award-winning founder of Recreate India Research Foundation (Re:CREATe), India’s first research and advocacy enterprise which aims to catalyze and advance remanufacturing in the nation. In December 2020, Re:CREATe received the prestigious ‘Remanufacturer of the Year’ Award from Rematec in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Rajiv is also the Regional Sustainability Lead at Hazen Canada (previously WaterSMART | A Hazen Company), a leading water stewardship consultancy in Canada. He has previously served as Assistant Vice President of a consulting firm in India specializing in corporate sustainability and policy research. He also served as the Business Manager, and in engineering roles for nearly seven years at the New York State Pollution Prevention Institute (NYSP2I), at the Golisano Institute for Sustainability (GIS).

Rajiv holds an ME in Mechanical Engineering (2006) from the University of Sussex in England, an ME in Engineering Management (2009) from the Kate Gleason College of Engineering and an MBA (2014) from the Saunders College of Business, both at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). He successfully completed the Business Sustainability Management program of study (2017) from the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) in England, and holds the Sustainability Excellence Professional (SEP) credential (2022) developed by the International Society of Sustainability Professionals (ISSP) and administered by Green Business Certification Inc. (GBCI).

Rajiv has worked with organizations in diverse industries including food manufacturing, pulp and paper manufacturing, chemical manufacturing, metal finishing, healthcare, think tanks, and government bodies. He has guest lectured at universities in the US which include the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, the Saunders College of Business and the Golisano Institute for Sustainability at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Wells College, St. Lawrence University, and the Department of Earth & Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

He has spoken at numerous conferences in the U.S., Europe and India, and has previously blogged for the Huffington Post and the Good News Network. He briefly served on the editorial board of the magazine ‘SQ – Raising the Sustainability Quotient’ published by the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI), one of the oldest chambers in India, established in 1836. His articles and work have been featured by outlets such as The Economic Times, Rematec, Polymers Communique, Corporate Citizen, and Chemical Engineering World. Most recently, he was the primary author of the policy brief titled “Accelerating the Transition to a Functional Circular Economy by Mainstreaming Remanufacturing” published as part of the proceedings of the G20 hosted by Brazil in 2024.

His interests include the evolution of business models, the power of systemic changes aligning industry towards greater sustainability and circularity, sustainable finance, as well as the meeting point of science and spirituality and how it shapes problem perception and problem solving. He engages in secular and well-being-oriented practices like meditation and fasting.