Profile
Dr Kamal Kapadia is a climate educator, entrepreneur, researcher, and clean energy policy advocate with nearly three decades of experience working at the intersection of climate change, energy transitions, sustainable development, and education. Her work focuses on helping people build the skills and competencies they need for meaningful, impactful careers in climate and sustainability.
Kamal is the Co-Founder of Skill Up for Earth, a non-profit organisation that partners with universities and other institutions to develop innovative, accessible and skills-based climate and sustainability education for professionals around the world. She co-leads the Certificate in Climate Solutions and Strategies, developed in partnership with Oxford's Environmental Change Institute, and is also working with other universities to develop portfolios of courses and micro-credentials in climate, clean energy, conservation and sustainability.
Kamal began her career in the late 1990s developing solar PV markets in two very different contexts: with SELCO, building off-grid solar electricity markets for rural communities in India and Sri Lanka, and with the founding team of Solarcentury (now Statkraft UK), helping to create the first market for grid-connected solar PV in the UK. Her subsequent work has spanned clean energy policy and advocacy, sustainable development, and education, including roles with the World Bank, the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement of Sri Lanka, and Blue Planet Foundation in Hawai‘i. In 2020, Kamal co-founded Terra.do, a climate education and careers company, where she served as Chief Learning Officer for five years.
Kamal was also a research fellow at the Environmental Change Institute from 2008 to 2012. She holds a PhD in Energy and Resources from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MSc in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford.
Research interests:
Climate and sustainability skills, competencies and jobs: Kamal's research focuses on identifying the skills, competencies and roles needed to drive systems change and build just, sustainable economies in this era of overlapping planetary crises. She uses this research to design and build scalable, highly accessible education programs. Her current focus is on the skills and competencies needed for the energy transition.
Climate education philosophy, design and innovation: Kamal is building a theory of education that draws on the neuroscience of learning, global and decolonial pedagogies, planetary health metrics, systems change research, her research into sustainability skills and competencies, and her experience as an educator. She conducts ongoing research into student experience and career outcomes in the courses she and her colleagues build and run at Skill Up for Earth, using it to innovate on learning design and practice.
Connect with Kamal on LinkedIn