Dr Tia Kansara Hon FRIBA
Tia is a multi award-winning entrepreneur. The youngest to ever receive the Royal Institute British Architects honorary fellowship, she is the co-founder of Kansara Hackney Ltd, the first ISO-certified sustainable lifestyle consultancy, and CEO of Replenish Earth Ltd, a cause and a collective action to protect the global commons.
Hailed amongst the Top 100 most influential leaders in Tech by the Financial Times and Inclusive Boards, her clients include Coca Cola, Bloomberg, the European Commission, Forbes, Formula One, MIT, and Siemens.
Aside from being the UCL Bartlett’s Ambassador to the Gulf region and advisor to the Economic Times of India, she’s an economist and future cities thought leader. In 2010, she wrote the brief and appointed the architects Foster+Partners for the Saudi American Bank‘s multi-million dollar headquarters as the first female to judge a LEED platinum building in Riyadh.
Tia did her Ph.D. at University College London, Energy Institute on designing future cities and energy evaluation, she has extensive experience in the Arabian Gulf. During her PhD, she worked alongside MIT and the Urban Planning Council, the Executive Affairs Authority, Department of Municipal Affairs, Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority, Regulation and Supervision Bureau to create the first energy baseline and comprehensive energy evaluation in the Gulf.
In 2000 she was invited to present the International Baccalaureate (IB) to Lord Adonis, Educational Policy Adviser at the UK Prime Minister’s Policy Unit, Cabinet Office. Trained at SOAS in Economics and South Asian Studies, whilst working with Bloomberg, she was employed by the Japanese Ministry of Education to modernise the teaching of the English syllabus for High Schools in Japan. While in Japan, she translated the Sanskrit works of Lord Swaminarayan’s “Shikshapatri” into Japanese.
Her publications in peer-reviewed journals range from sustainable cities to human performancehealth and well being, presenting her findings at conferences internationally through social media. She has been invited to advise on sustainable cities for the government and private sector as well as at conferences around the world. In 2012, Tia was invited to present her views to President Hollande and Ban Ki Moon on the UN initiative: Sustainable Energy for All and has since worked closely with the Abu Dhabi government to deliver manageable energy reductions in the built environment, presenting her findings at the World Future Energy Summit, Abu Dhabi.
As a professional moderator, lecturer and author; she has interviewed world figures and experts, moderating for Forbes, Coca Cola, European Business Angels Network and London Business School, and delivered keynote speeches on the future of cities. She has lectured at New Delhi School of Planning; Musashi Institute of Technology; KEA University; McGill University; University of British Columbia; School of Architecture and Planning; and School of Architecture, to name a few. An executive committee member of London Business School’s Global Energy Summit, and also Co-director of the international CleanTechChallenge. In association with the Club of Rome and the United Nations General Assembly she has advised the Royal family of Bhutan and Past Prime Minister Jigme Thinley and Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay on the creation of an international commission on sustainable, economic growth.