Kanika Dewan

Founder & Creative Director, Ka Design Atelier

Hailing from a diverse background, Miss Kanika Dewan was born an Indian, raised in the Middle East, and educated in England and the United States and has worked across several continents, giving Kanika the ideal exposure to address the sensitivities required to overcome hindrances towards achieving a utopian society through incorporating SDGs in an increasingly polarized world.

Recognized as one of the top 40 Global Leaders by The Wharton School of Business, Kanika has been awarded several Entrepreneur Of The Year accolades on an international level and was recently selected as a ‘Young Global Leader’ (YGL) for the World Economic Forum. In her role as YGL, Kanika has made further developments towards her goal to reduce corruption on a global level. Through the World Economic Forum, she has been exposed to inimitable leadership journeys in Japan, Argentina and Jordan, where she has publicly presented her social impact initiatives amongst other recognized global leaders. Her recent speech at the World Economic Forum in Jordan, about her new initiative: a unique indicator of economic progress, has been recognized by the UN and associations of the World Bank.

Kanika Dewan started her journey as an Investment Banker after graduating with a concentration in Finance and Entrepreneurial Management from The Wharton School. Driven by a desire to push envelopes and change global paradigms, Kanika has constantly reinvented herself, leaving investment banking and then becoming an entrepreneur in the male-dominated industry of construction and design and is now pioneering various innovative programs in design and construction on a global level.

Kanika has earned a place in the ‘Guinness Book of World Records’ for her work and, as one of the few women at the forefront of major infrastructure projects in Asia, journalists have lauded her for designing and building all stone works and finishes at some of the world's largest airports: The New Delhi International Airport: T3 & Mumbai International Airport. As Chairperson of Ka Design Atelier, Kanika’s design acumen and technical expertise extends to art work in stone for the world’s largest yachts including works the King of Oman’s vessel where she innovated a proprietary light-weight stone system. Kanika's ethos of "life improvement" was behind her designing a state-of-the-art environmentally-friendly stone paneling system for the 7-star Leela Palace Resort in Delhi. Her contribution to the world of design is further expanding to define a milieu of art, technology, ecology and education in museum spaces within airports in order to communicate a unified message to empower a divergent society.