Prof. Rohan Sarma, Chair of the Business and Affirmative Action Council, is a leading CSR, ESG and sustainability expert shaping inclusive business practices in India.
Prof. rohan sarma is a social and behavioural scientist whose broad area of work has been to understand and analyse the dynamic relationship between Business and Society, and is focused on two curiosities:
1. How does business affect/impact society?
2. What externalities and risks affect/impact business and what are the strategies for mitigating these risks and converting into opportunities?
For one and a half decades, Prof. rohan has built ‘purpose driven’ institutions, both within public institutions and private sector impact consulting, by founding and leading high performance, inter disciplinary and high energy teams. rohan is passionate about Purpose, curious about Compassionate Capitalism, an advocate of Sustainability, an avid supporter of interventions pertaining to neglected thematics, geographies and peoples, and a practitioner of interdisciplinarity, diversity and integration. He is an optimist about the transformative power of business to create a sustainable future.
As a young leader who has steered several Government of India initiatives, Prof. rohan has demonstrated dexterity in participatory research and development planning with vulnerable communities as well as strategic management consulting with business leaders in India. He has been invited by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) as ‘Expert Member’ to the CII National CSR Committee, to advise CSR leaders from India Inc. on CSR and Sustainability strategies and goals as well as by the CII Foundation as ‘Invited Expert – Business and Community Initiatives’. Prof. rohan is also ‘Special Invitee and Specialist’ to the ‘CSR and Sustainability Sector Committee’ of the European Business Group (EBG) Federation, an association of leading European businesses in India, and advises them on integrating Sustainability in business.
As a Change Management specialist, Prof. rohan continues to provide strategic counsel to public sectorand private sector leaders in India through Responsible Business policy and programme formulationand developing frameworks and actions plans on CSR and Sustainability. Prof. rohan’s most noteworthy contribution has been in developing the ‘Assessment and Empanelment Standards for Development Institutions in India’ (AESDII) in 2011, as one of the founding members of India’s first Government of India supported and funded CSR thinktank at Asia’s premier social sciences institute – the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai.
Prof. rohan is the Course Director of the Course ‘Strategy for Sustainability’ and Visiting Professor at Shiv Nadar University as well as at the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA).
As an artist, his initiative – the Visual, Aural and Sociological (VAS) Project – aims to co-create open access, autonomous, and public infrastructures of thinking, learning and acting through interactive and discursive pedagogies. rohan advises some non-profits and mentors several young professionals, development enthusiasts and social entrepreneurs, through his initiative ‘Community of Purpose’.
Currently, as a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Responsible Business (CRB), rohan provides strategic counsel to Public and Private Sector Boards and senior leadership in integrating and embedding sustainability into core business practices.
Given his contributions to the CSR and Sustainability sector in India through policy, research and thought leadership, in June 2023, Prof. rohan was invited by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), Government of India, India’s National Standards body, to serve on India’s first drafting committee on the National ESG Standards as the ‘Social Expert’. In September 2023, rohan was conferred additional charge as the Convenor/Chair of the Working Group on Topical Standards for ‘Affected Communities’.
In May 2024, rohan was invited by India’s national standards body, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), as an expert on the ‘Research Evaluation Committee’ of the Management Systems Department (MSD-10) Sectional Committee, to evaluate R&D institutional research proposals for grants sanctioning. Given his research focus and advocacy on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), rohan has been nominated from India to serve on the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) Technical Committee ISO/PC 343 on SDG Management.
Read More: Business and Affirmative Action Council (BAAC)
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