Second Nature | Ashka Naik

Ashka Naik, Director of Strategic Initiatives and Development

Ashka Naik joined Second Nature in January 2009 as a Program Manager for the Advancing Green Building Initiative, was promoted to Director of Strategic Initiatives in August of 2010, and then Director of Strategic Initiatives and Development in September of 2011. In her current role, Ashka leads various programs with a mission to advance the institutional capacity of under-resourced and minority-serving institutions to commit to sustainability and climate neutrality. Before joining Second Nature, Ashka worked as the Project Coordinator for the Harvard University’s Office for Sustainability. Over the last ten years, she has also worked extensively in India and the UK on sustainability projects.

Following her passion for sustainability issues in developing countries, in 2007 she co-founded Artha Studio, a sustainable design company in India. Artha Studio leverages the field of architectural design to bridge the milieus of environmental justice and the built environment. Two of the community projects undertaken at Artha are the design and construction of a shelter for battered women in rural India as well as the conservation of a public school building for underprivileged children.

Ashka is passionate about exploring a common platform between communities and sustainability through creative design thinking. Her commitment to sustainability was reinforced during her education as an interior architect and subsequently as a product designer. She received her Master’s degree in Product Design, with a focus on sustainable design, from the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (UK), and her Bachelor’s degree in Interior Architecture from the Center for Environmental Planning and Technology (India). During her education, she investigated the impacts of industrialization on craftsmen’s communities across India and analyzed various facets of sustainable design thinking to strategically rejuvenate the country's vanishing crafts.

Following her commitment to and interest in Education for Sustainability (EfS), in addition to her EfS work at Second Nature, Ashka is also involved in bringing sustainability to the core curricula of the higher education programs on design and architecture in India.