Pallavi Santhapuram is a civil engineer turned sustainability advocate who shifted from a 12-year career in structural design to focus on sustainable practices. Through her content creation, podcasting, and projects like The Eco Loop, Pallavi is dedicated to educating entrepreneurs on how to make sustainability a way of life. Let’s explore her story of transformation and impact!
After 12 years as a civil engineer and structural designer, Pallavi Santhapuram sought to find a more meaningful purpose in her life. As she started researching ways to heal herself emotionally and physically, she discovered that eating unprocessed, wholesome food started to help improve her hormonal issues, and walking in nature provided an unexpected but profound relief. “It was quite eye-opening how simple changes brought me so much healing,” she explains.
Feeling drawn to nature’s healing power, Pallavi took a leap. She decided to take a year-long sabbatical to experiment and explore something new. It was during this time that she discovered LEED certification, which focuses on building in harmony with the environment. This discovery was life-changing as it really brought her passion and her skillset together. The certification also opened her eyes to the environmental damage caused by everyday actions—not just in construction but in daily habits.
Inspired by her newfound awareness, Pallavi began making changes in her own life and educating those around her. In 2018, with a deep sense of responsibility to give back to nature, she launched The Eco Loop, a company offering alternatives to single-use plastics. Entrepreneurship taught her many lessons, but after 5 years of doing e-commerce and B2B, Pallavi realised her true passion lay in educating others and spreading awareness rather than in selling products.
This realisation led her to pivot into upscaling her content creation, where she really focused on writing blogs, creating videos, and eventually launching The Eco Sheroes podcast. The podcast, now gearing up for its third season, focuses on amplifying the voices of women in sustainability. “It’s about bringing these incredible women’s stories to life and helping listeners see how sustainable is attainable,” Pallavi says. Her content creation work didn’t go unnoticed—Purpose, a social initiative partnered with the UN, took notice of her work during COP28 and invited her to create content for their Verified Champions Campaign, a turning point in her journey
