In a world where sustainability commonly starts and ends on paper, Alkesh Rajdev has turned it into a movement which made a huge impact on communities, organizations, and continents. His path as Senior Manager of Sustainability at Farnek Services LLC challenges traditional leadership; he builds a bridge between compliance and transformation, demonstrating that corporate success and environmental responsibility can coexist. He has developed into a visionary who sees sustainability as a strategic philosophy that connects people, data, and purpose rather than a collection of regulations, having started off performing energy audits and pursuing green certifications with little involvement.
His strategy is both structural and human-centric, he is empowering departments to integrate sustainability into their everyday operations, develop rising leaders, and uses AI-powered systems to transform complex carbon data into real-time insights. His work spans a variety of contexts, from the technology-driven UAE to cost-conscious India and community-focused Africa, illustrating that effective solutions must be both locally practical and globally knowledgeable.
He exemplifies innovative, pragmatic, and inclusive leadership by guiding enterprises through their first greenhouse gas inventory, turning net-zero pledges into concrete strategies, and fostering regenerative initiatives that benefit both people and the world. His experience exemplifies the power of sustained transformation when expertise meets empathy, strategy meets purpose, and ambition meets accessibility.
From Compliance to Transformation
Alkesh’s leadership philosophy mirrors sustainability’s evolution. He recalls his early days when discipline meant conducting energy audits, pursuing green certifications, and producing reports that few people acted upon. “I now see sustainability leadership as the ability to connect people, data, and purpose,” he explains. His approach has shifted from managing operations efficiently to inspiring transformation systemically.
He no longer enforces green policies from the top down. Instead, he enables every department, from finance to facilities, to think and act sustainably. He builds ecosystems where sustainability becomes instinctive rather than instructional, creating conditions where employees naturally ask better questions and executives view environmental responsibility as value creation.
Conquering the Mindset Challenge
Guiding multiple organizations through their first greenhouse gas inventories revealed a surprising insight: the biggest obstacle wasn’t technical complexity, it was mindset. “Many organizations viewed greenhouse gas inventories as an external reporting exercise,” he notes. He reframed the conversation entirely, positioning emissions data as a strategic management tool that drives better business decisions.
He showed procurement teams how emissions data influences supplier selection and demonstrated to logistics managers how carbon metrics reveal optimization opportunities. Through platforms like CarbonTek, he turned retrospective reporting into real-time management. The turning point arrives when teams stop asking “Why do we need this?” and start asking “How can we reduce this?”
AI-Powered Sustainability
Traditional sustainability reporting looked backward, analyzing historical data. Alkesh sees artificial intelligence fundamentally changing this paradigm. The platforms he has helped developed are now using AI to categorize complex Scope 3 data in minutes the work that previously consumed days or months. These systems can draft sustainability reports aligned with global frameworks, freeing professionals to focus on strategic impact.
“AI won’t replace sustainability professionalism rather will amplify their impact,” he predicts. He envisions predictive analytics identifying potential carbon hotspots before they materialize, making sustainability faster, fairer, and far more scalable. This technology democratizes expertise, making sophisticated analysis accessible to organizations that lack large environmental teams.
Contextualizing Solutions Across Continents
Alkesh’s work spans dramatically in different contexts, from the innovation-driven UAE to scale-focused India to community-centered Africa. In the UAE, regulation and technological innovation are driving progress. India demands affordable, scalable approaches. Africa requires solutions that deliver tangible community impact.
“You can’t copy-paste solutions, you have to contextualize them,” he emphasizes. Whether designing carbon accounting systems, facilitating renewable energy adoption, or implementing waste management programs, he blends global best practices with regional practicality. According to him true leadership lies in harmonizing ambition with accessibility.
Turning Net-Zero Pledges into Action
While thousands of organizations announce ambitious carbon neutrality targets, many struggle with implementation. Alkesh has developed a systematic approach to bridge this gap. “Net-zero is not a sustainability goal, it’s a business strategy,” he tells clients. He links decarbonization to financial logic, calculating the return on investment for every proposed measure. Once the CFO recognizes sustainability as value creation, organizational momentum builds dramatically.
Simultaneously, he involves all departments in the journey. At Farnek, this inclusive model transformed sustainability from an isolated project into a performance culture. His approach recognizes that lasting change cannot be imposed, it must be co-created across the organization.
Building the Business Case
Alkesh integrates financial analysis into every decarbonization plan. His toolkit includes energy audits, waste assessments, supplier engagement programs, and Marginal Abatement Cost Curves that identify measures delivering both emission reduction and cost savings.
One client reinvested savings from energy-efficiency measures into renewable energy certificates (I-RECs), achieving simultaneous operational savings and carbon reduction. When finance and sustainability speak the same language, environmental initiatives stop being expenses and become investments.
Influencing Without Authority
Sustainability depends heavily on supply chain collaboration. When Alkesh began supplier engagement programs, many partners hesitated to share data or change materials due to cost fears. He approached these relationships through transparency and trust rather than pressure.
Alkesh explained the business value of sustainable sourcing, how it attracts new clients, reduces risks, and strengthens brand reputation. He built a stepwise framework encompassing awareness, collaboration, and accountability. Once suppliers recognized that sustainability strengthens resilience, resistance transformed into genuine partnership. Change travels fastest when built on mutual benefit.
Developing Future Leaders
Mentoring young professionals, particularly women in sustainability, occupies a central place in Alkesh’s work. He believes every sustainability professional should lead with both empathy and evidence. Through workshops, on-site training, and tool demonstrations, he helps emerging professionals understand not just what to measure but why it matters.
At Farnek and other organizations, he has trained diverse groups ranging from CEOs to on-ground cleaners, from procurement staff to suppliers, from corporate professionals to students. Many individuals he has mentored are now leading sustainability initiatives independently and representing his biggest success.
Regulation as Opportunity
Climate regulation continues accelerating globally. The UAE’s Federal Decree-Law No. 11 of 2024 exemplifies this trend. Rather than viewing regulation as burden, Alkesh sees it as opportunity. He has aligned all his projects to be “regulation ready,” structuring data systems compatible with MOCCAE’s monitoring, reporting, and verification framework.
“Those who prepare now will lead the market tomorrow,” he tells clients. His proactive approach builds compliance into operations rather than treating it as a retrofit.
Beyond Carbon: A Holistic Vision
While Alkesh excels at carbon accounting, he insists that sustainability without humanity is just mathematics. He has actively participated in forest conservation and community engagement initiatives, from supporting REDD+ programs in Africa to local reforestation campaigns in the UAE and India. These projects protect carbon sinks while empowering local communities through employment, training, and biodiversity restoration.
He has also championed circular economy principles, sustainable procurement, and employee engagement programs. His proudest moments occur when behavior changes, when employees spontaneously segregate waste, facilities conserve water, or suppliers adopt fair practices. For him, sustainability means creating regenerative values for people, planet, and profit.
A Legacy of Practical Progress
After a decade of driving transformation, Alkesh remains motivated by witnessing change in action, when a client’s carbon footprint becomes a roadmap, when a team he mentored launches their own initiative, when a tool he built simplifies reporting for hundreds of users.
His legacy goal is straightforward, to make sustainability practical, profitable, and personal. As he expands platforms like CarbonTek to integrate renewable tracking, waste analytics, and carbon credits, he positions organizations to manage their entire sustainability lifecycle. He anticipates that the next decade will see AI, IoT, and sustainability merging into intelligent decarbonization ecosystems, with circularity, biodiversity, and social impact gaining equal focus alongside carbon.
The most sustainable organizations, he predicts, will be those that regenerate, not just reduce. This regenerative vision guides his work as he accelerates progress of one organization, one leader, one team at a time. Alkesh’s journey demonstrates that sustainability leadership requires technical expertise, strategic thinking, financial acumen, cross-cultural sensitivity, and genuine human connection, proving that environmental responsibility and business prosperity can advance together through commitment, not just compliance.
