Local Sandy Hook resident Sattie Persaud has kept herself quite busy over the past month. Her busy schedule does not just focus on being the owner of Hilltop Kitchen or being the founder of World Heritage Cultural Center (WHCC). Persaud has found herself traveling over 40 hours into Belém, Brazil to sit on a panel, both as a moderator and as a panelist at COP30, United Nations Climate Change Conference.

Persaud was asked to be a part of COP30 because of the work she does through WHCC. Persaud’s nonprofit works with over 70 embassies and 850 cultural groups around the world to preserve, promote, and celebrate cultural heritage and to promote peace throughout the world. WHCC is now in its 20th year.

“My work spans diplomacy, sustainability, and social innovation,” Persaud said.

She explained that she works with universities, governments, and international institutions to “position cultural heritage as a climate infrastructure.”

“Cultural heritage should also be alongside protecting the planet, earth, land, water. Think about it: a farmer in India that’s using a thousand-year-old, or even older, practice to farm land successfully, when he passes away, if there’s nobody to pass it on to, that knowledge dies. There’s a lot of practices around the globe that the current generation or newer generation don’t know anything about. Within those practices lies healthy options to protect the earth,” Persaud explained.

Persaud recently returned from a trip abroad where she visited Dubai for World Green Economy Summit, Berlin, and Cambridge. In Berlin, Persaud helped launch UN’s Food for Good initiative, which is aimed at eliminating food waste. In Cambridge, Persaud was invited by a professor to speak to students about WHCC and the work Persaud does to preserve cultural heritage.

In Cambridge, Persaud also attended CO-Creating Code: Ethics, Knowledge and Culture in the Age of AI. This event was hosted by Professor Nazia Habib and Elizabeth Guckenheimer, two recipients of Persaud’s inaugural EmpowHER Awards.

Somewhere in her travels, she was invited to COP30 and asked to help moderate the panel “Just Transition Workforce Development: Reskilling for Green Economy Careers.” Persaud said she is “very honored” and “humbled” to be invited as a panelist, which is opening the door for her to have a bigger role in COP31 next year.

Persaud also plans to launch a whole conference at Cambridge next year about AI. “We see AI as a tool that can help sustain cultural heritage, but we’re also creating an ethical framework. We would like to offer [the framework] to governments, schools, universities, even citizens to use.” Persaud’s “pillars” of this framework include human oversight and moral agency; cultural integrity and inclusivity; dignity, equity, and justice; creativity, storytelling, and the arts as moral compass; and cultural resilience as climate and social infrastructure.

WHCC In Sandy Hook

Persaud explained that she is trying to get WHCC clubs established in the schools to help students become “worldly.” Her previous events have included volunteers from schools.

Though Persaud hoped to host another EmpowHER Awards ceremony this year, she decided to hold off as the “economic strains” are weighing on the community. Next year, she hopes to host a winter ball and give out ten awards instead of five to make up for the lost year.

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Reporter Sam Cross can be reached at sam@thebee.com.