Venkatesan received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Economics from Vanderbilt University; her dissertation focus was on the creation of the black middle class in America.

[1] Following a postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University in St.Louis, she entered the financial services industry as an equity analyst, and then served as an investor relations officer for three Fortune 250 companies in the insurance sector.

[1] In 2014, she re-entered academic employment as an assistant professor of Economics at Bridgewater State University[1] and in 2017, she joined the faculty of the Department of Economics at Northeastern University as an assistant teaching professor, where her research and writing continued to focus on equity, justice, and sustainability.

[11][12] She is an advocate for changing the quantitative focus of present economic goals (e.g., GDP, income) to qualitative attributes of well-being that acknowledge and incorporate the interconnectivity between humans and the ecosystems they inhabit.

[13] In 2016, Venkatesan established Sustainable Practices,[14] [15] a 501(c)3 nonprofit with a mission "to facilitate a culture of sustainability as defined by reducing the human-made impact to the planet and its ecosystems" within Barnstable County, Massachusetts, and serves as the organization's executive director.