(Photo Courtesy of Aakanksha Sinha)
On a recent weekday afternoon, Aakanksha Sinha held one hand up to her ear and another to her daughter’s mouth—balancing back-to-back meetings with feeding time. It was a scene that neatly captured her life: multitasking and weaving care into work.
Sinha is many things: a social work researcher, an academic-turned-policy leader, and the co-founder of Spice Waala, a social enterprise restaurant in Seattle that serves up authentic Indian food.
One thing her diverse work ventures have in, however, is common community connection.
“I wanted my work to feel closer to reality,” Sinha said.
Singhave’s career began with a long stint in academia. Beginning all the way in New Delhi, where she grew up and studied at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University. After graduating, she joined the International Labour Organisation, specializing in child-labor policies across South Asia.
This work sparked her interest in social work on a macro scale, tied to policy change. Specifically, Sinha was interested in child nutrition and how family dynamics can influence what children eat. In 2010, this interest brought her to Boston College, where she obtained a master’s degree in global social work and Ph.D. in philosophy.
She then began her teaching career, working at universities across the country before landing a tenure-track role at Seattle University. But something wasn’t clicking.
“I realized that while I respected academia deeply … the thing that’s always driven me is how research can be applied on the ground,” Sinha said.
In 2021, Sinha left academia for Casey Family Programs, a national foundation working to improve the foster care system.
“Policy work at Casey feels immediate,” Sinha said. “You can see the impact.”
But once again, Sinha felt the drive to do more. This time, her community driven work took the form of a restaurant that began as a family experiment in reimagining Indian food in America.
“When we first moved, we couldn’t find the Indian food that felt like home,” Sinha said. “It was always butter chicken, the same stereotypes. We thought—what if we did something different?”
Now, that experiment has grown into three Seattle locations and a thriving social enterprise.
Drawing on nostalgia and Indian food as they know it, Sinha and her husband’s restaurant Spice Waala features Kathi rolls and chaat, all made fresh without any shortcuts.
But the restaurant was always supposed to be about more than food.
“We asked ourselves, ‘How do we bring business and social work together?’” Sinha said.
The answer came in a three-pillar model: employee well-being, community outreach, and cultural awareness. Employees are offered living wages, paid time off, retirement plans, and even zero-interest emergency loans—benefits extremely rare in the restaurant world.
Spice Waala also invests outward, funding food justice partnerships and running Bhojan, a community kitchen program that has served more than 42,000 free, nutritious meals tailored to immigrant communities known to be overlooked by traditional food banks.
Bhojan began at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our instinct was to serve free food directly from the restaurant, but very few people came,” Sinha said.
Sinha quickly adapted her plan.
“We started talking to organisations and realised there was stigma. People didn’t want to make an extra trip,” Sinha said. “So we pivoted—instead of expecting people to come to us, we partnered with community groups to distribute meals. That’s why it grew.”
That ability to iterate, Sinha said, has also been crucial to surviving the volatility of the restaurant industry.
“We started in April 2019, and by the time we took off, the pandemic hit,” Sinha said. “We’ve only known how to function in crisis.”
Rising food costs and wage hikes have made margins tight. But careful financial discipline—along with a willingness to adapt through rotating menus and inventive specials—has allowed them to stay afloat.
Not only that, it has brought success. featuring the restaurant in many top restaurant lists for the Seattle area. For Sinha though, its success also comes in how it has allowed her to apply her academic interests to real life.
“Food and nutrition have always been an area of interest,” Sinha said. “Within any household, you see the inequalities: who gets served first, who gets more. And at a larger level, food is one of the biggest dividers in basic needs. That’s why I’ve always felt it’s the right place to focus.”
Sayaka Yubki, who studied alongside Sinha in the Master of Social Work program at BC, experienced firsthand Sinha’s commitment to bringing her personal convictions to practice.
“A lot of us had ideas about making a difference,” Yabuki said. “But Aakanksha was one of the few who translated that conviction into action, over and over again.”
Balancing the expanding restaurant business with her full-time job at Casey Family Programs isn’t always straightforward.
“It’s been difficult, but it’s something that we’re deeply invested in,” Sinha said. “And you always get a bit more excited when you see the impact you’re having in the community.”
Luckily, Sinha has some help.
“My husband runs the day-to-day operations—he’s the rock,” Sinha said. “I focus more on HR, community connections, and strategy. And we have a team of twelve across locations who make it all work.”
Nights and weekends are often reserved for recipe testing or brainstorming new initiatives, according to Sinha.
Anne Day Leong, senior director of research and evaluation at UNICEF USA, recognized Sinha’s adaptability right from the start of the two’s friendship. This time, though, in a slightly different form: unassembled furniture and a lack of tools.
“She had no tools,” Leong said. “So I showed up with a drill.”
What struck Leong then was Sinha’s willingness to take the first step, even if it meant asking for help, and her ability to inspire others to leap alongside her.
“She’s a big ideas person who always goes first,” Leong said. “That courage makes the rest of us braver.”
For Sinha, transforming big ideas into tangible impacts is what keeps her going.
“Academia and research can sometimes be so abstract,” Sinha said. “It’s so rewarding to see your effort actually having an impact. That drives you.”