Takeaways

• Indonesian entrepreneur Denica Riadini-Flesch has won UCLA’s 2025 Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award for creating one of the world’s first farm-to-closet supply chains through her ethical fashion label, SukkhaCitta.
• Her regenerative model restores ecosystems, empowers women artisans, and preserves Indonesia’s textile heritage while cutting pollution and carbon emissions.
• The recognition highlights how fashion can become a force for environmental innovation and social equity.

Economist-turned-entrepreneur Denica Riadini-Flesch has been named the winner of the 2025 Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award by UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. She received the $100,000 prize for pioneering a “farm-to-closet” model that’s transforming fashion from one of the world’s most polluting industries into a regenerative force for good.

Announced in Los Angeles on October 8, the award celebrates next-generation leaders tackling global environmental challenges. Riadini-Flesch’s win marks her as the ninth laureate of UCLA’s flagship sustainability prize, which honors innovators under 40.

Riadini-Flesch is the founder of SukkhaCitta, a social enterprise that partners with smallholder farmers and women artisans across Indonesia. Her initiative bypasses factory systems, instead growing cotton on family farms, using plant-based dyes, and weaving textiles by hand in rural courtyards. The result is a transparent supply chain that benefits both people and the planet.

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Her model’s impact is measurable: Over 120 acres of degraded land restored, nearly 5 million liters of dye wastewater prevented, 25 tons of CO2 emissions reduced, and women’s incomes boosted by 60%. “Artisans and farmers are the missing link to solving the climate crisis, and we ignore them at our peril,” she said. “My work shows that when rural artisans lead — when Indigenous wisdom, regenerative farming and economic dignity are placed at the heart of our solutions — we don’t just reduce harm, we lay the blueprint for a regenerative future.”

Judges praised her work as “a regenerative masterpiece.” Audrey Choi, chair of the Generation Foundation, noted that Riadini-Flesch has “reimagined a new kind of supply chain from the ground up, one that restores nature and strengthens communities.”

Riadini-Flesch’s inspiration came from witnessing the toll of synthetic dyes on rural women. That encounter led her to blend Indigenous craft, ecological science, and regenerative farming, creating a circular model where seeds and incomes grow before garments are sewn.

SukkhaCitta’s textiles now reach over 30 countries and have been worn by cultural icons like Yo-Yo Ma and Chris Martin. Beyond fashion, her “Rumah SukkhaCitta” schools train women in heritage skills, ecological literacy, and business management, passing traditional knowledge to younger generations.

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By 2050, she aims to regenerate 2.5 million acres and create sustainable livelihoods for 10,000 women. For Riadini-Flesch, the journey goes beyond business metrics. “The opposite of poverty isn’t wealth,” she said. “It’s dignity.”

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Source: UCLA