The Make Water Work Podcast - Episode 44 Featuring Shalini Vajjhala

Episode 44: Catalyst Collab - Shalini Vajjhala, PhD

No one wants a water main. They want clean water. No one needs a highway. They need to get their kids to school safely.

In this episode of the Make Water Work Catalyst Collab, Isaac Pellerin and Chelsea Boozer (Executive Director, Rogue Water Lab) sit down with Dr. Shalini Vajjhala, Executive Director of PRE Collective, to talk about the messy, unglamorous early stage of infrastructure work that most projects skip, and why skipping it is exactly how communities end up with a bigger pump instead of a better outcome.

In this episode, we cover:

• How working in Cairo, Mumbai, and Rio de Janeiro during architecture school first showed Shalini that water touches everything, even when it's not the headline
• What "predevelopment" actually means, and why it gets treated like a soft cost instead of the thing that determines whether a project succeeds
• The Hoboken story: how reframing a flood resilience ask turned a $5 million pump request into a $100 million community park
• Why asking "what would it take for you to support this?" gets further than presenting a finished plan
• A masterclass in plain language, including how Shalini explained carbon sequestration to her grandmother using a coal stove and a bucket of smoke
• Why trust is built through underpromising, overdelivering, and simply telling people the truth about how long things will take
• What's ahead at Catalyst San Diego, August 31–September 3, 2026, where Shalini will be guiding a session

If you work in water infrastructure, community engagement, or utility leadership, this conversation will change how you think about the first conversation you have on your next project.