Connecting across cultures: Dhwani Pandya

28 July 2025

The twentyfifty team work with global companies to deliver on their commitments to respect human rights.

In this edition of our 'Meet the Impact Makers' interview series, we sit down with Consultant Dhwani Pandya who joined twentyfifty in 2022.

Dhwani talks about addressing child labour, the importance of making connections, and her love of cooking.

Tell us about your career to date. What brought you to twentyfifty?

I started my career in tourism – a little bit in India, and then Japan where I eventually moved into sustainable tourism.

One of the things that I loved about it – and which I feel like I still get to do at twentyfifty – was connecting people and building an understanding of different cultures.

When the Covid-19 pandemic impacted tourism, I went to the University of Bath to do a Master's degree in Sustainability.

There, Luke Wilde (twentyfifty founder and Chief Executive) and Consultant Sam Stitt gave a talk in a Business Ethics lecture – which was becoming my favourite subject. He spoke about twentyfifty, and I hadn’t realised jobs like that existed!

So when a role came up, I applied.

What does a day at twentyfifty look like for you?

I think one of the benefits of being a consultant is the variety of work. Every day looks different.

You can have a day where you have your head down, writing a report – not always my favourite thing to do, but rewarding when it’s done! – or where you're speaking to suppliers or clients about the project and important topics like child labour.

And then sometimes you go into the field. This helps to connect everything you're doing on your laptop to what's actually happening. You meet rightsholders and the supplier teams that carry out the work on the ground. Opportunities like that are one of the special things that twentyfifty has given me.

What’s one thing you find inspiring or motivating about your work in Business and Human Rights?

I think, for me, it's inspiring to speak to all the different people – from clients to colleagues, to suppliers, to rightsholders. Everyone has such amazing knowledge and insights.

I’ve recently been working on a child labour monitoring and remediation system for a client. It’s a process to identify and respond to individual cases of child labour in their supply chains, working with their teams across six different countries.

It’s really interesting to put something theoretical like this into practice and have conversations with suppliers about how it will be brought to life.

It’s not ‘one size fits all’ because it’s about what works in the specific context. What are their challenges? What are the children facing? How do you respond to that?

This can look very different depending on whether it’s implemented in Asia, Africa or the Americas.

I think that’s amazing, because it shows we don’t just use the system and ‘let things happen’. Instead, it's customised in a way that will actually create impact.

What advice would you give to Human Rights teams who are looking to make a greater impact?

I think it’s important to remember that it’s all about people. That's everyone from rightsholders to suppliers who get thousands of different customers asking them to do thousands of different things, to the client teams themselves.

I think you can risk getting lost in spreadsheets and reports. They're important, but the key to creating impact is bringing in the voices and listening to rightsholders and suppliers. Because what's the point of a fantastically written policy if it doesn't work for the people?

And at twentyfifty, we’re not just listening, but actively engaging rightsholders with action-planning, implementation and monitoring.

Finally, where might we find you when you're not at work?

Probably in the kitchen. I love to cook. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it does not. I made some really nice spicy meatballs the other day from scratch. I've failed at making bread a few times, but I'll get there one day!

I also love long walks and travelling as much as possible. Coming from Asia, where everything's so much further away than in Europe, it's almost mind-blowing where you can go. It's amazing to say ‘oh, we'll just pop over to Amsterdam for the weekend’!

Thank you for your time, Dhwani!

Like many of our colleagues, Dhwani brings great expertise in working with clients on tackling child labour.

If your company is looking for guidance on this, or any other Business and Human Rights topics, get in touch at info@twentyfifty.co.uk.