The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom have always been in the minority… It will take such a small committed minority to work unrelentingly to win the uncommitted majority. Such a group may transform America’s greatest dilemma into her most glorious opportunity.
Background
Kannan grew up in the foothills of a sacred mountain in southern Tamil Nadu, in a farming family where life was inextricably linked with land. After an early career in technology, he returned to his agrarian roots — this time in East Boston, where he has lived for over two decades.
In 2015, he and a neighbor found an abandoned city-owned lot, cleaned it up, planted garlic, and refused to leave. That stubbornness became Eastie Farm — dedicated to climate justice, food security, and community resilience. When COVID hit East Boston in 2020, Kannan co-created Mutual Aid Eastie and served over 5,000 meals a week to food-insecure families while supporting shuttered local restaurants. Under his leadership, Eastie Farm built the first geothermally powered zero-emissions greenhouse in New England and a CSA program supporting small regional farms while serving hundreds of families across the economic spectrum.
Kannan believes solutions to local, current problems are the strongest building blocks of solutions to global, long-term ones. Food is not separate from climate. Connecting people with nature and with each other, he believes, is the ultimate antidote to apathy.
He serves as President of Friends of Belle Isle Marsh, at-large member of Boston’s Community Preservation Committee ($25-30M/yr in public funds), Boston Conservation Commissioner, and former Vice Chair of the Massachusetts Sierra Club. He is a Harvard Loeb Fellow (2024), 2023 Grist 50 Fixer, incoming MIT MLK Scholar, and co-director of BU’s Media Innovation and Social Impact initiative.
His theory of change: only nature-based solutions and the genuine empowerment of those made vulnerable by longstanding injustices can help communities escape vicious cycles and enter virtuous ones.
At its root, the work is personal — and the keeping of a lifelong vow.
Interests
Design of spaces for inclusivity,, co-creating with community, the role of community in research, organizational sustainability, climate science, role in AI in social justice, archeoastronomy, climate adaptation and mitigation, community-scale climate solutions, scaling climate solution models, effective communication via trust-building and story-telling, leadership development