Tia Kansara, PhD, Hon FRIBA, is a multi-award-winning entrepreneur with more than twenty years in sustainable development, known for creating health-enhancing environments that foster holistic wellbeing, longevity and regeneration across generations.
As CEO of Replenish Earth Ltd, a cause and a collective action to protect the global commons, she merges technology with ecological principles to restore the planet and build resilient communities. In 2008 she co-founded Kansara Hackney Ltd with Rod Hackney, the UK’s first ISO-certified sustainable lifestyle consultancy, and became the youngest person ever to receive the Royal Institute of British Architects’ honorary fellowship. She is also a visiting professor at CEPT University.
Cities, energy and the people inside them
Tia completed her PhD at University College London’s Energy Institute on designing future cities and evaluating their energy use. During it she worked alongside MIT, the Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council, the Executive Affairs Authority, the Department of Municipal Affairs, the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority and the Regulation and Supervision Bureau to create the first energy baseline and comprehensive energy evaluation in the Gulf.
In 2010 she wrote the brief and appointed Foster + Partners for the Saudi American Bank’s headquarters, becoming the first woman to judge a LEED Platinum building in Riyadh. She has served as UCL Bartlett’s Ambassador to the Gulf and as an adviser to the Economic Times of India.
On the world stage
In 2012 she presented her views to President Hollande and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the UN’s Sustainable Energy for All initiative. In association with the Club of Rome and the UN General Assembly, she advised the Royal Family of Bhutan and Prime Ministers Jigme Thinley and Tshering Tobgay on an international commission for sustainable economic growth. She has hosted the UN’s pavilion at COP and advised on post-SDG strategy.
Named by the Financial Times among the UK’s top 100 ethnic minority leaders in technology, she counts Coca-Cola, Bloomberg, the European Commission, Forbes, Formula One, MIT and Siemens among her clients. As a keynote speaker and moderator she has worked with Forbes, Google, Coca-Cola, the European Business Angels Network and London Business School, and has lectured at McGill University, the University of British Columbia, the New Delhi School of Planning and Musashi Institute of Technology, among others.
Where it began
From a family with roots in Gujarat and schooled in Birmingham, Tia presented the International Baccalaureate to Lord Adonis at the Prime Minister’s Policy Unit in 2000. She studied Economics and South Asian Studies at SOAS, then worked with the Japanese Ministry of Education to modernise English teaching in Japanese high schools, translating Lord Swaminarayan’s Shikshapatri into Japanese along the way.
Through Wild Woman, Tia turns two decades of designing healthier places toward the most intimate environment of all: a woman’s own body, and the cycles of the earth and sky it moves with.
- PhD, UCL Energy Institute; Economics and South Asian Studies, SOAS
- Youngest recipient of the RIBA honorary fellowship
- CEO, Replenish Earth Ltd; co-founder, Kansara Hackney Ltd
- Financial Times top 100 ethnic minority leaders in technology, 2018
- Adviser to the Royal Family and Prime Ministers of Bhutan
Co-founder