Fellow Story

Paul receives Emerging Leaders Fund award

Fellow(s): Sanjana Paul
Topic(s): Environmental & Social Justice, Environmental Education

Sanjana Paul’s organization, the Rooted Futures Lab, is a 2025 recipient of the The Claneil Foundation Emerging Leaders Fund. 

The Claneil Foundation created the Emerging Leaders Fund to support the critical role that executive directors play in launching and growing early-stage organizations. Awardees receive a four-year unrestricted general operating grant totaling $300,000 to each recipient’s organization and offers the leaders a thoughtful, close-knit support network of peers. In addition, each grantee partner has access to $10,000 in professional development/wellness funds to support its designated leader. 

Recipients are selected based on their creative vision, leadership capacity, potential for impact, and commitment to innovation and learning in one or more of the following issue areas: education, hunger & nutrition/food system, health & human services, environment. 

Rooted Futures Lab was selected for their work to address the systemic neglect and exclusion of environmental justice in technology development and application. They envision a world where technology is radically reimagined to support human and planetary well-being for the global majority. They work toward this future through three pillars of education, research, and action, empowering communities and leaders to create technology for a thriving world.

In addition to directing the Rooted Futures Lab, Sanjana is a PhD student at MIT, where her research focuses on renewable energy, energy justice, and the electric grid. She is a 2024 Switzer Fellow.

Meet the Fellows in this Story

Sanjana Paul

Sanjana Paul

2024 Fellow
Sanjana is an engineer, environmental justice researcher, and systems thinker working at the intersection of infrastructure, climate, and technology. She is a PhD student at MIT, where her research focuses on renewable energy, energy justice, and the electric grid. She is the co-founder of Rooted Futures Lab, a research and action collective advancing environmental justice in technology, and Earth Hacks, a nonprofit harnessing hackathons as a form of climate action. Her work has ranged from atmospheric science software engineering at NASA to passing decarbonization policy at the local level. She holds a BS in electrical engineering and physics, and a Master’s in City Planning from MIT.