CBT's Devanshi Purohit Named to Boston Business Journal's 40 Under 40!
We are proud to announce that CBT Principal Devanshi Purohit – the youngest CBTer to ever have held this title – has recently been named to the Boston Business Journal’s 2023 40 Under 40!
Joining an impressive roster of Boston’s most talented young professionals across multiple industries, Devanshi’s recognition follows her nomination to the annual Boston Chamber of Commerce’s Pinnacle Award for 2023’s Emerging Executive earlier this year. “At a time when innovative and diverse leadership is critical,” reflects Carolyn M. Jones, Boston Business Journal’s market president and publisher, “this year’s 40 Under 40 honorees represent a positive path ahead for Greater Boston business and the community as a whole.”
Devanshi joined CBT as an urban designer in 2014. In these past nine years, she was promoted to Senior Associate, then Associate Principal (the youngest woman to be named to this position), and, in 2023 named Principal. Her work and her profile with the design industry have grown exponentially in recent years, as she has established and curated large-scale public discourse around some of the most critical topics of our time: the effects of climate change. Her leadership and expertise are fueling vital climate-sensitive city-building for Boston and beyond.
Within CBT, Devanshi is a role model and renaissance professional who is a recognized mentor, friend, and talented designer of many kinds. She is a facile, agile, and technically adept professional able to communicate with partners around the world and across practice areas. She is a brilliant, kind, patient, and indefatigable colleague who we all admire sincerely each day and with whom we all delight in collaborating.
For Devanshi, design is a cultural and environmental change agent, and her design vision expands to architecture beyond buildings, to design that reflects and responds to our always-evolving environment, encompassing and honoring the spirit, history, and culture of place. This vision is the foundation for her approach to connected, equitable, and resilient environments for all, exemplified in the following projects, among many others:
Suffolk Downs Redevelopment, Boston, MA
Cambridge Crossing, Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, MA
Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Design Strategies for Urban Heat Initiatives
Devanshi is actively engaged in community discussions and resiliency workshops sponsored by a variety of organizations, including the Boston Society for Architecture, where she has been appointed to serve as co-chair of the Committee on Resilient Environments. She is also among the leaders fo the City of Boston program Climate Ready Boston Leaders, which trains local rising professionals to lead conversations about climate change preparedness and the city’s climate mitigation and adaptation strategy. The BSA’s Policy Director also invited Devanshi to participate in developing the Climate Resilient Design Standards and Guidelines Focus Group of the Boston Planning and Development Agency.
Devanshi plays an instrumental role in designing solutions to mitigate urban heat in global cities. Examples of this include her selection as one of eight under-35 design leaders selected globally to participate in Copenhagen Urban Lab 2019 to provide new perspectives and solutions for urban heat mitigation for the cities of Copenhagen and Frederiksberg in Denmark. She also collaborated on the development of urban design heat mitigation prototypes for CBT’s award-winning design for Abu Dhabi’s Climate Resilience Initiative. A much-sought speaker on design strategies for urban heat, in the past three years, Devanshi has presented nationally with the AIA, APA, ULI, and ABX, and her work has been published in several publications including ArchDaily, the Urban Land Institute’s Living with Heat report and ArchitectureBoston.
Congratulations, Devanshi, on this well-deserved honor and inspiring achievement!
