Ashwini (Asha) Srikantiah 

Asha Srikantiah is an innovative educator and business builder who uses storytelling and strategy to address real-world problems. Currently, she is a Director at The Claremont Colleges’ Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity (the Hive), a creativity and innovation hub where she teaches design with an equity-based lens, including through Visual Thinking Strategies. She is also a clinical professor of engineering at Harvey Mudd College.

With nearly two decades of industry experience, Asha's career journey started in film and media with roles at Viacom Productions, New Line Cinema, and JWT.  She then pivoted her focus to use creative problem-solving for meaningful social impact.  As an "intrapreneur" at Fidelity Investments, Asha spearheaded the development of the Fidelity Student Debt Relief Program—a groundbreaking social enterprise designed to increase financial equity for borrowers through employer-sponsored benefit systems and financial literacy tools. Asha grew this program from inception to substantial national scale, working with talented multi-functional teams to strategically bring iterative product development, design research, go-to-market strategy, operational scaling, influential thought leadership and successful legislative advocacy to life. 

Outside of work, Asha finds joy in music, cooking, hiking, and exploring her new home state of California.