Madhavi Venkatesan MELP'16 earned her doctorate, master's and bachelor's degrees in economics from Vanderbilt University and has published three economics textbooks under the series A Framework for Sustainable Practices: Economic Principles: A Primer, Foundations of Microeconomics, and Foundations for Macroeconomics. In 2019 she published her fourth text, SDG8 – Sustainable Economic Growth and Decent Work for All. She is presently under contract with Routledge to write SDG12: Responsible Consumption and Production and her text, Economics of Sustainability is scheduled to be published by Springer in late 2021.

In 2016, Madhavi established Sustainable Practices, a 501(c)3 nonprofit with a mission "to facilitate a culture of sustainability as defined by reducing the human-made impact to the planet and its ecosystems" within Barnstable County, Massachusetts and is the organization’s executive director. In 2019, Sustainable Practices initiated the Municipal Plastic Bottle Ban campaign and in spring 2020, facilitated the Commercial Single-use Plastic Water Bottle Ban. As of year-end 2020, the Municipal Ban has been adopted by 13 of the 15 towns that constitute Barnstable County, and the Commercial Ban was adopted by Town Meeting vote in seven of the ten towns in was presented in fall 2020. The organization is continuing its efforts related to both bans in 2021.

Madhavi's academic interests include the integration of sustainability into the economics curriculum. She has been active in promoting education and stakeholder engagement to incorporate ethics into the existing economic framework and her written work has largely focused on these topics as a catalyst to promoting sustainability. Madhavi has also contributed to the literature on the relationship between culture, sustainability, and economics, addressing the relationship between economic systems and cultural convergence.

As of April 2021, Madhavi is the editor in chief of Sustainability and Climate Change.