Vanita Yadav

Dr Vanita Yadav is a Senior Fellow at the Urban Transformations Research Centre and a senior academic staff member supervising PhDs and teaching in the School of Business at Western Sydney University. Her expertise spans innovation, entrepreneurship, business models, strategic management, sustainability, and governance, with a strong emphasis on transdisciplinary and impact-driven research.

Dr Vanita is the founder and leader of the AgriMaitri Initiative, a flagship Australia–India platform supported through the Australian Government's CAIR Maitri grants that brings together government, industry, research, and farmer organisations to transform agribusiness collaboration, innovation, and sustainable economic development.

She brings over 15 years of international academic and research experience across Australia, the United States, and India. She is a recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Fellowship, through which she undertook research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), focusing on sustainability-driven entrepreneurship and innovation. She has also been a Research Affiliate at the South Asia Institute, Harvard University, contributing to scholarship in innovation management.

At Western Sydney University, her research examines critical contemporary challenges at the intersection of business, agribusiness, innovation, governance, and sustainable development. This includes work on innovation management, entrepreneurship, international trade, agribusiness, multi-stakeholder governance of climate-related challenges (such as urban heat and housing), strategies for enhancing and adopting green solutions, and regenerative business models.

Dr Vanita has produced over 50 scholarly outputs, including award-winning publications and Best Paper Awards. She supervises doctoral candidates in the business area, serves on editorial boards, and serves as a keynote speaker and expert panellist at international forums.