Prayash is Senior Program Manager – Sustainable Cities and Transport. He joined WRI India in 2016, and has since supported knowledge advisory engagements with several Central, State, and Local governments across a variety of urbanisation-focused subjects.

At present, he helps coordinate the Clean Air program’s Accelerator for Clean Air Actions (ACAAS) initiative that provides technical handholding towards sectoral air quality improvement solutions to 10 cities across the country. He also anchors the India Alliance for Clean Construction (IACC), a stakeholders coalition for mainstreaming and advancing construction dust mitigation practice. Previously, he has supported the handholding of cities under MoHUA’s national pilot on Local Area Plans and Town Planning Schemes, design and deployment of MoHUA’s Global Housing Technology Challenge, and anchoring of state-level training programs under various national urban development schemes such as the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and the Housing for All mission (Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana – Urban, PMAY-U).

His past experience spans grant-making, conservation, urban design, and architecture. Key assignments he has been part of include UN-Habitat’s Urban Youth Fund, Mumbai’s Development Plan review, community-led slum upgrading proposals for Dar es Salaam, envisioning theory of change frameworks to counter gentrification in London, sections Ahmedabad’s Sabarmati Riverfront Development Scheme, Delhi’s nomination to UNESCO for World Heritage Site status, and urban renewal proposals for downtown Lyon.

Prayash completed his Master of Science in Urban Development Planning from University College London (UCL) in 2014, and Bachelor of Architecture from School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, in 2012. He lives in Delhi, and enjoys hoarding books, taking photographs, planning vacations, reading maps, and lifting weights in his free time.