Dr Pullanikkatil is the Co-Director of the SFA Network.

A bored Civil Engineer turned happy environmentalist, Deepa has lived in Tanzania, Lesotho, India, Malawi, Swaziland and South Africa.  She has a PhD in Environmental Science from North West University, South Africa and is a LEAD Fellow (Cohort 19). Her research interests are ecosystem services for poverty alleviation and climate change adaptation work. She has undertaken consultancies for Governments of Malawi and Swaziland in climate change adaptation work and has been the consultant for the technology needs assessment for climate change adaptation in Swaziland. At Rhodes University, South Africa, where she undertook a Post Doctoral Research Fellowship between 2016-2017, she worked on amongst other things, a book documenting personal stories of individuals from around the world who used non-timber forest products to rise above poverty. Deepa founded Abundance Worldwide in 2016, a non-profit organization based in Malawi (www.abundanceworldwide.org), which takes an integrated approach to development.