Gauri Mirashi (India, Mahindra UWC, Whitman ’11) runs Civic Response Team, a start-up consulting firm in Aurangabad, her hometown in India, that works with government bodies to improve municipal systems for solid-waste management.

“We function as a think tank and consultancy, working with local governing bodies to design and implement effective waste-management solutions,” writes Gauri, who earned a master’s degree in urban policy and governance from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. (Married last year, she is now Gauri Mirashi Shirshath.) “We focus on building the capacities of the sanitation departments of these government bodies, and work with them on exercises such as route planning and optimization, decentralized treatment, and ensuring source segregation from households and commercial establishments.”

Civic Response Team contracts with Mahindra UWC to design and execute content for three summer programs at Mahindra: Youth Environment and Sustainability (YES), Theatre Gender Identify, and Film and Encounter India. The firm used its 2015 profits from the YES program to sponsor a scholarship for a student who has been committed to environmental issues on campus.

Between graduate school and her current position, Gauri adds, “I spent a year working at the Riverside School in Ahmedabad on a program called Design for Change, which was a great experience for me and set me up nicely, in terms of the skills I picked up, for what I am doing now.”