Embode was founded by Aarti Kapoor in 2015 as a result of her experience living and working across boundaries of culture, countries, race, gender and class and finding the need for a better world where people’s wellbeing was protected regardless of identity.
Who? Established in 2015, Embode is an independent human rights and social sustainability consulting agency. Our a leading specialisations are in business responsibility, supply chain sustainability as well as social protection and development.
Where? We are an Asia-based organisation with a global reach, covering Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas.
What? We pride ourselves as a global majority based and experienced organisation with equal technical expertise in international and national frameworks on human rights, corporate responsibility, social protection and development.
Why? Embode is a blend of the words ’embody’ and ‘abode’, representing the dynamism of internal transformation in order to co-create the world we call home.
The Seed
Throughout her vocation across contexts and settings, Aarti found that institutions the world over, need to work consciously to contain and harness the aspirations of their members so that they can effectively and passionately serve purpose for people. It is when organisations and systems are underresourced, unable to hold healthy boundaries and incapable of learning from experience, that people they serve are left vulnerable and open to risk of harm.
Our Culture
Embode was established as a learning organisation that holds its own systemic transformation as a lens for serving businesses and organisations to better protect and promote human rights. We run ourselves as a 100% work-from-home mission-driven business where work-life balance is maintained so that our team turns up conscientiously and emboldened to tackle the issues and solve systemic problems for our clients.
Global Majority
Embode sets itself in the contexts and environments of the Global Majority. With a diverse array of capabilities, experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives, we meet in our joint mission to support client organisations reach their potential. We directly understand that when basic development and social needs, from access to water and electricity, to education and social security is scant, people and communities have little else to focus on but survival. In our work, we seek to strengthen relationships, so that employers and workers, businesses, and communities, take up shared responsibility for life that works and respects everyone.
Global Structures and Frameworks:
We frame our work through international shared visions as enumerated in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, as well as the Sustainable Development Goals. We know that real change happens when nation states embed and implement universal principles that uphold the dignity of people and planet into their jurisdictional laws, structures and mandated responsibilities. It is in the enforcement of national laws on labour, social protection, education, health care and security that people thrive and are enabled to care for their wellbeing. When national frameworks are clear and strong, corporate businesses and civic organisations are shaped for success and enabled to bring value to the people and planet they serve.
Our Organisation Principles
As a purpose-driven organisation, we are inherently aware of just how important our clients’ missions are in ensuring human potential. This is why we work with the following principles:
We work in Alignment
We listen carefully to what you want to achieve and why you want to achieve it. Each client project has its own unique objectives and desired outcomes. These are often both outward looking such as to ensure compliance with HRDD frameworks, as well as inwards looking, such as to build consensus across corporate departments. This is how we identify the purpose of the project and align ourselves to it through finding and taking up our role.
We are Accountable
We remain accountable to working with integrity. So, once we have committed to working with you, you can rely on us not only to deliver, but also be confident in us as a critical friend. Sometimes this means that we will present perspectives and advice which may be difficult to hear but nevertheless is in your best interests to know. At other times, we will go to lengths to explain contexts and cultures where cookie-cutter approaches will not be effective. The opportunity for learning is invaluable.
We are Adaptable
We work to an agreed plan. And we work with the emergent. To this end, we hold our boundaries in way that enables challenges and factors to be integrated and used as resources. Every project is engaged with its tailored methodology, process and result. When clients come back to us mid-project, with a new set of circumstances, we work together to adapt and proceed.
