NASHIN MAHTANI

humanitarian designer
architect / researcher / theorist / artist / activist
advocating for social & environmental justice

There is much to learn

from paying attention
to the many ways by which
people reposition themselves
to make everyday life possible
in the face of compounded vulnerabilities

and

engaging in such challenges
from a posture of
joy, curiousity, generosity,
and collectivity.

Nashin Mahtani is the director of Yayasan Peta Bencana (Disaster Map Foundation), a non-profit developing humanitarian technologies for community-led disaster risk reduction since 2017, and founder of the award-winning Situational Intelligence Open Source Software, supporting communities facing increasing climate risk. . She led the expansion of the life-saving plaform PetaBencana.id, from a city-scale flood mapping platform to a real-time multi-hazard mapping platform serving over 350 million people in South East Asia. She then developed a contextually-sensitive, research-design strategy to adapt and scale the software across diverse geographies, leading its expansion and operational success in multiple countries. In 2019, she founded MapaKalamidad.ph. Under her leadership, the software has matured into an enterprise-level disaster management tool, launching Indonesia’s first real-time disaster notification service and an innovative peer-to-peer resource-sharing system. In 2024, she founded the Climate Emergency Software Alliance to facilitate international coordination and adoption of the software. Supporting the development of one of the largest open source software projects for climate adaptation, her activism is driven by theory, scholarship and ethnographic research.

With a background in architecture, Nashin’s applied and research investigations center around water polities and infrastructures, communication and media philosophies, and epigenetic adaptations. She is also principal co-investigator of MERA, a research and design collective investigating the future of governance structures foregrounded in ecological homeostasis.

In 2025 she was recognized by the United Nations as a Rising Star in Disaster Risk Reduction and as an Obama Leader. 2021 she was recognized by Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 for her contributions to the region's social issues. Nashin was also one of five global semi-finalists for the prestigious Global Citizen Prize: Cisco Youth Leadership Award in 2019, listed as a Southeast Asian Women Leader by YSEALI in 2020, and recognized as a Women Innovator by the Information Society Innovation Fund in 2018. She has been featured in outlets such as the BBC, Economist, Forbes, Tatler, OECD.

Nashin’s written, design, and film work, has been widely published in numerous journals and exhibited across various international venues. She is a frequent speaker and presenter, and continues to be engaged as a guest lecturer with schools and universities globally.

Nashin completed her Masters of Architecture (M.Arch '15) and Bachelors of Architectural Studies (BAS '14) at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She has previously worked as an architect in New York, Los Angeles, Miami, & Toronto.