Dr Kush Kanodia

About

Areas of focus: Sustainable Innovation and Civic Mission
Kush is a disability rights and race equality champion, a multiple award-winning social entrepreneur and a systems leader. Kush creates systemic change for the inclusion of disabled people focusing on the intersection of disability with his portfolio career.
He is advisor to the world’s first Global Disability Innovation Hub and the world’s first WHO (World Health Organisation) collaboration centre on assistive technology with UCL and Trustee and Director at AbilityNet. He is also Trustee and Director at the Centre for Access to Football in Europe, Intersectional advisory board member and Trustee for Inclusion London (supporting Deaf and Disabled people’s organisations in London) and Ambassador for Disability Rights UK.
Kush graduated with a BSc in Management Science and achieved a Master of Business Administration (MBA) with Distinction Honours from the University of Kent.
Previously, Kush has worked with some of the largest and most influential organisations from the BBC, HSBC, and the NHS to Bloomberg, Lehman Brother and Morgan Stanley. In 2009, Kush left a successful career as an investment banker to focus on disability inclusion, co-founding the global diversity non-governmental organisation Choice International.
Kush was a Torch Bearer for the Paralympic Games in London 2012. He was selected for his dedication to disability rights and his inspirational career. In 2018, Kush was cited as one of the top ten most influential BAME leaders in technology by the Financial Times. In 2019, he received the Asian Achievers Award for Entrepreneur of the Year, was included in the BAME 100 Business Leaders Index by Green Park, and he received the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award by TiE London. Kush was ranked second in the Disability Power 100, Shaw Trust list of most powerful and influential disabled people in the UK.
As a Level Playing Field Trustee, Kush helped to gain a commitment from all Premier League football clubs to comply with accessibility guidelines of UEFA and Centre for Access to Football in Europe. In 2021, Kush led the #NoWheelChairTax campaign to success. Transforming the largest health system in the world - NHS England. Abolishing all disabled car parking charges from 206 NHS hospital trusts, helping 2.5 million disabled Blue Badges holders to access critical healthcare during the pandemic.
Kush also persuaded the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to simplify and expand free disabled parking from one to four hours for three of the leading NHS hospitals in the country."
In 2022, Kush was awarded with an Honorary degree for Doctor of Science, for having an inspirational career as a disability and rights champion and social entrepreneur with Kent University. The University of Kent acknowledged Kush’s system leadership of NHS England and stated the following:
“This is by some margin the single largest and most impactful change in the treatment of disabled people in the history of the NHS."
Kush’s new campaign focuses on climate justice and social justice for disabled people by providing reasonable adjustments and exemptions from the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) during the cost of living crisis. Kush has now also achieved success in transforming the whole of London for disability inclusion for ULEZ from January 2023.