Menka Parekh is a director of the innovation and venturing company Beyond Zero. She is a specialist in innovation for sustainable development. Working first with the United Nations and then as a Corporate Responsibility strategist, she has led the design of a number of blended value initiatives, including a local microfinance service in Ghana, carbon-trading platform for SMEs in the UK, eco-tourism lodge in Thailand, and a knowledge-sharing community connecting international development agencies with grassroots activists. Her first partnership endeavor focused on community-led enterprise along the equatorial region and resulted in a commercial social venture fund to scale and replicate successful business models in the area. She is experienced in the use of scenarios to inspire new ideas and action, and has developed futures work for Barclays Bank, The Cabinet Office, UNDP, Plaid Cymru and The Guardian. Through working in many different sectors and silos, Menka has become deeply passionate about collaborative innovation as a response to systemic challenges, and has been working in partnership with NESTA to identify the key success criteria for large open-source projects for social impact. Menka thrives on creative collisions with those who see the world differently, and spent 3 years on the start-up and leadership team of the Hub, creating shared work and meeting spaces - a global ‘home’ - for diverse social innovators to be inspired by each other. She is an alumni of Cambridge University and Forum for the Future, and  enjoys sharing insights through writing and events organized by the IUCN, Imperial University, Bath School of Management, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Dana Centre, Worldchanging.com and others. She is based in London, and has strong roots in the UAE, India and Sudan.