Veda Sunassee

Veda Sunassee joined African Leadership Academy in 2010 as a Princeton-in-Africa fellow. He majored with a degree in Political Science and Political Economy from Princeton University though he spent his first two years of college studying Mechanical & Aerospace engineering. Veda also has a deep passion for entrepreneurship, a field that he explored during a sabbatical from Princeton following his sophomore year when he journeyed back to his village, St. Julien D’Hotman, on the tiny Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.

There, he was inspired to form the Young Volunteers Association (YVA) in an effort to promote civic engagement. “I had a lot of hours to kill on my bike,” recalls Veda. “And the perspective from the bike seat is quite different, especially when you’re biking past some of the most beautiful beaches in the world and you feel gutted seeing how littered some of those beaches are.”


During its first year, YVA initiated three projects that included raising money and awareness for diabetes, a sensitization campaign against the dangers of alcohol abuse, and Recyclemania, a competition among local elementary schools to raise awareness about sustainability. When he returned to campus, Veda changed his major from engineering to politics, and in his junior year enrolled in a non-credit seminar that focused on social entrepreneurship. Through the seminar, Veda learned about Ashoka, one of the world’s leading social entrepreneur organizations. He secured a summer internship at Ashoka’s global office in Washington, D.C., where he helped supervise a Baltimore-based project that converted some of the city’s most troubled alleys from crime scenes into green community spaces.

At Princeton, Veda co-founded the Princeton Social Entrepreneurship Initiative (SEI), which seeks to create an environment where every student can become a catalyst for social change by weaving leadership, entrepreneurship, design, and transformative thinking into the fabric of the Princeton experience. Through SEI, Veda created the first ever social entrepreneurship track for TigerLaunch, an annual business plan competition organized by the student-run Princeton Entrepreneurship Club. Veda also co-founded the I³ Award that recognizes inspirational, innovative and impactful entrepreneurs. The first two recipients of the award were Bill Drayton and Peter Kellner, founder and co-founder of Ashoka and Endeavor respectively.