Just & Green

Devi Ramkissoon ’06 traces her focus on sustainability back to her childhood. In her native Guyana, her family watered their vegetable garden with rain from a barrel, and repaired or repurposed household items instead of throwing them out. Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., she watched her parents apply these principles to their day-to-day lives. For example, they used every inch of a tiny yard to fill the dinner table with vegetables and shared their bounty with their local community.

“I didn’t think about these practices as sustainability,” she says. “For me, they were practices of survival.”

Today, Ramkissoon concentrates her efforts on helping Philadelphia-area businesses adopt sustainable practices, ranging from composting to clean energy. It’s a worthy investment, she says. In the long run, there is a higher price for inaction.

“Businesses must consider their environmental and social impacts,” she says, “such as carbon emissions and supporting local communities.”

Resource sharing, especially for businesses operating on tight margins, is core to Ramkissoon’s effort as executive director of the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia (SBN).

“SBN helps business owners figure out where to start, how to grow their impact, and how to get the financing they might need,” she says.

Ramkissoon brings nearly 20 years of experience in international development to SBN, with a focus on promoting sustainable business practices to boost economies and reduce poverty. She spent nearly a decade with the U.S. Agency for International Development, managing multimillion-dollar food security and private sector development projects.

Under her leadership, beginning in 2022, SBN has broadened its mission, redefining what sustainability means in a city with a 25% poverty rate, while more strongly advocating for the disproportionately few Black- and Latino-owned businesses in the city.

“Communities faced with higher poverty rates often get left out of the dialogue on sustainability,” she says, “because it seems like something only for individuals or businesses with a lot of resources.”

Ramkissoon strives to provide businesses with the tools and resources they need to achieve sustainability goals through SBN, knowing that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.

“If I can help shift the narrative on sustainability to be more inclusive and improve our collective impact on our environment, local communities, and economy,” she says, “I’ll view myself as successful in this role.”