Akansha Hazari

Chief Executive Officer & Founder, LoveLocal

At age 21, she was on the founding team of Young Professionals in Foreign Policy, the world’s first policy think tank for young people. Her many accomplishments include leading a $200m loan guarantee facility to support Palestinian-owned SMEs, working on clean technology business strategy at Booz & Co, leading a Pan-India agritech project at Technoserve over the course of which she spent a year living in villages across India. In 2011, she won the million-dollar Hult Prize from former US President Bill Clinton for her unique idea to scale access to clean water in rural Indian communities - the business idea that would subsequently become m.Paani. She also received the Vital Voices Global Economic Empowerment Award 2016 from Secretaries of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Madeleine Albright, and is named /recognised in US Senate Resolution 418. Other awards include, the Google Rising Star Award 2013 and the Action for India Silicon Valley Challenge Winner 2014. Akanksha is the only Indian tech entrepreneur to be chosen and featured in the book - "Vital Voices: 100 Women Using their Power to Empower''. The book celebrates 100 global women leaders who are redefining power, in which Akanksha is featured alongside Melinda Gates, Malala Yousafzai, Greta Thunberg, Beyoncé, Serena Williams and many other inspiring women. The book was accompanied by a ground-breaking art exhibition of original portraits of each featured women leader, painted by renowned artist Gayle Kabaker, at the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC. A graduate of Princeton and Cambridge and an Ashoka Fellow, Akanksha speaks six languages and is a former competitive squash player ranked among the top 20 junior players internationally