Guest Speakers

The Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust (SLC-IT) is an NGO working in the Trans Himalayan regions of Ladakh for the conservation of the highly endangered snow leopard. Over the years, SLC-IT has established itself as one of the most successful conservation organisation in the Himalayas. Their programs are meticulously designed to conserve the mountain ecosystem in collaboration with local communities. SLC-IT has won multiple national and international awards, including the Global Vision Award for Community Outreach, the RBS Earth Guardian Award, the Carl Zeiss Wildlife Conservation Award and many more for their commendable work in the field of conservation.

Prakash has over 30 years of experience in engineering, marketing, and general management in semiconductor, mobile computing, multimedia, digital imaging, digital video, wireless communications, mobile TV broadcast, and consumer electronics. Born in India, he immigrated to the U.S.A. in 1972, where he completed his Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois. He co-founded NeoMagic Corp. which became one of the fastest-growing semiconductor companies and a leader in providing multimedia accelerators to the Notebook PC market with over 60% market share and revenues of $250 million. He was awarded the 1998 Ernst & Young "Entrepreneur of the Year Award" for excellence and extraordinary success in innovation, financial performance, and personal commitment to his business and community. Prakash has been very active in local and global charities through his private foundation, The Agarwal Foundation. He is also an active Charter Member of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) and co-chaired the 2011 TiECon, the largest convention for entrepreneurs. TiECon was voted by Worth magazine as one of the 10 Best Conferences for ideas and entrepreneurship.

Mr. Zabir Ahmed is founder of Ladakh Organic Farmers Foundation (LOFF). LOFF was established by the local community with an objective to promote organic and sustainable farming by practicing integrated agriculture in Ladakh. They focus on the development of Ladakh region- a cold desert- through promoting indigenous agriculture practices and using renewable energy such as passive solar technology for a holistic development. A salient feature of the Foundation is that most of its producers are women and youth. Earning an extra income means that they can and stay in their villages instead of migrating to urban areas in search of jobs.

CEO, UnLtd India

Anshu Bhartia is the CEO of UnLtd India, a launchpad for social entrepreneurs who are designing and executing innovative solutions to pressing problems in India. She has over 25 years of experience working in global for-profit and nonprofit organisations. Prior to UnLtd India, Anshu was the CEO of Revitalising Rainfed Agriculture Network (RRAN) and Friends of WWB, a leading financial services organisation. Her passion lies in mentoring and taking social organisations to scale.

Siddharth Chauhan is an independent filmmaker from Shimla. He was awarded the Youth Achiever Award by Hindustan Times Group. His films have been screened across places including Sarajevo, UK, US, Belarus, Indonesia, New Zealand, Italy, China, Canada, and France. He is the youngest and the first independent filmmaker from Himachal Pradesh to have continuously taken his locally produced films outside India.

His latest film Pashi, premiered at the Oscar Qualifying Rhode Island International Film Festival in the US. The only Indian short film selected in that competition in 2017. He has screened his films across many international film festivals and won uncountable awards.

Henry Coleman has dedicated his life to Helena Norberg-Hodge's organisation, Local Futures. Hodge is famous for her books and documentaries about Ladakh and how much the world has to learn from empathy and collaboration. He showcased 'Economies of Happiness' for the Naropa Fellows, and the response to it was understood by the riveting discussions that ensued after. The Fellows took impassioned stances on the various issues the movie brought forth and it was Henry's masterful moderation that kept the discussion alive. His ability to answer the toughest questions and then steer them to sprout more questions was the highlight of the event.

Stanzin Dorjai Gya, a filmmaker living in Ladakh, is dedicated to sharing stories that open the viewers’ eyes and minds to the unique challenges of life in the high Himalayas. Founder of the Himalayan Film House in Leh, Stanzin has directed and produced notable feature films and documentaries on regional, national and international issues. Like other children of Gya Village, Stanzin had a semi-nomadic childhood, spending half of the month tending his family’s herd of yaks and cashmere goats, while attending school during the other half. He joined SECMOL and learning in a non-traditional setting ignited Stanzin’s passion for film. Later, he met Christiane Mordelet, a French filmmaker, and has henceforth worked in close collaboration with her, together producing internationally-acclaimed, award-winning films.

Mr. Tundup Dorjey is the founder and director of Overland Escape & Reach Ladakh. He is a post graduate in tourism from Pondicherry Central University. Realizing the threat that tourism poses to the fragile environment of Ladakh, he started this travel company based on the policy of “Tourism with Care for Nature”. Overland Escape is now one of the leading travel companies responsible for marketing Ladakh worldwide and in India, thereby positively contributing in developing the economy of the region. Overland Escape believes in protecting the character of the region they work in by being sensitive to diverse cultures and traditions. Preserving the natural environment through the promotion and support of various conservation efforts is also their priority. One of the initiatives of Overland Escape in this regard is the annual garbage cleaning trek which is held every year in the month of September. 

Co-Founder & COO, Leap Skills Academy Pvt Ltd

Ankit is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Leap Skills. He is the driving force behind the innovation and technology-based approach at Leap. As an impact-oriented skill-development organisation, Leap mentors' train and provide employment opportunities to students, unemployed youth and existing workforce through technology and classroom training. Over the last 4 years, Leap has trained over 6000 learners across 11 states in India through various programs and workshops.

An alumnus of The Doon School and College of Business Studies, Delhi University. He brings with him significant start-up experience at organisations like Zomato, Happily Unmarried and has worked as a part of the Risk Advisory practice at Ernst & Young India. He is also the youth representative for Duke of Edinburgh's International Award Program, a youth-focused recognition program for students from across the world. He has represented India at several award councils both domestically and internationally.

Barbara Gerke has lived for many years in the Himalayas with Tibetan communities, researching Tibetan medicine. She also co-founded and directed the International Trust for Traditional Medicine (ITTM) in Kalimpong, where she promoted students, research projects, and provided residential facilities and exchange opportunities for researchers from 1995 to 2008. She holds an MSc in Medical Anthropology and a DPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford. She has taught at the University of California Santa Barbara, and at Dartmouth College, and was assistant professor at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin. Currently she is based at the University of Vienna with a research project on Sowa Rigpa. Her monograph Long Lives and Untimely Deaths (2012, Brill) analyses long-life rituals, as well as vitality and life-span concepts among Tibetans in the Darjeeling Hills. Her monograph on the use of mercury in Sowa Rigpa, titled Taming the Poisonous: Mercury, Toxicity, and Safety in Tibetan Medical Practice, is forthcoming with Heidelberg University Publishing.

A qualified architect, Mr. Yutaka Hirako was born in Japan in 1974. In 1997, he cycled solo for thousands of kilometers across west Tibet to reach Lhasa. The year before, he had criss-crossed eastern Tibet on his bike to reach Lhasa. In 1998, he joined the Tibet Heritage Fund as a logistics manager for the Lhasa Old City Conservation project. From 2000 onwards, Mr. Hirako has been working as a programme manager/China project manager. 

Some of the major projects that he has overeen were the Beijing Hutong conservation study, restoration of the Jokhang temple, reconstruction of Ragen Stupa, and the Serkhang monastic complex conservation project. He also worked on the Sangin Dalai monastery restoration project in Mongolia. Since 2012, he has worked as programme director for the Leh Old Town Initiative and co-directed THF. His projects have won the following UNESCO awards:  

2011: Award of Merit. [UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards for Culture Heritage Conservation; Winner for Serkhang Monastery restoration project, Qinghai Province, China.] 

2009: Award of Excellence. [UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards for Culture Heritage Conservation; co-winner for Sangiin Dalai Monastery restoration project, Republic of Mongolia.]

Thomas K Shor is a writer and a photographer, having graduated with a degree in Comparative Religion and Literature from the University of Vermont. He has lectured widely about his books and photographs, including at Oxford University, the Rubin Museum of Art New York, the University of California Santa Barbara, Humboldt University of Berlin, etc. He has lived in the foothills of India’s western Himalayas, Oxford, Berlin and Vienna. He is a prolific write and his works include A Step Away From Paradise: The True Story of a Tibetan Lama’s Journey to a Land of Immortality and Leopard in the City: An Urban Fable. 2018 has also seen the publication of his two primarily photographic books, Ganges Lament and Sculpture Garden of the Gods, both featuring his work in black and white.

Monika Khanna Gulati is a graphic designer and has been in this field for the past 25 years. She has worked with The World Bank, British Council, Rapid Metro, Unicef, National Gallery of Modern Art, amongst others. She founded SkyBLUE Design in 1998 and has been teaching at the Sushant School of Design for the past four years. She tries to weave the issues of sustainability, pushing for the use of design as an agent of change. A zero-waste evangelist, she also steers the citizen action and awareness group, NCR Waste Matters. It is a platform to create, mobilize and recognise zero-waste champions by bringing together best practices, knowledge, vendors and citizens.

With a background in Materials Science and Technology from IIT (BHU) Varanasi, Vishal has 5+ years of experience of working in the waste management industry. Currently, he is the CEO of Waste Warriors Society, a youth-led non-profit aimed at improving waste management in the Himalayan states of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. They have a team of 100+ full-time members, with projects in Dharamshala, Dehradun, Rishikesh, and villages on the outskirts of the Corbett Tiger Reserve and Govind Wildlife Sanctuary. Over the past 9 years, they’ve processed 5000+ metric tonnes of waste by organizing 1000+ clean-ups with 6500+ volunteers, thus reducing the impact of plastics in these eco-sensitive areas.

Saurav Kumar Shah (IPS), executive director of Power Finance Commission Limited (PFC) and former deputy secretary, Department of Youth Affairs, Government of India, visited the Naropa campus on 4th October, 2021. He interacted with the Class of 2022 and shared his journey as a bureaucrat working with different government departments. The Fellows also engaged in a Q and A session, where they shared ideas about their Live-Action Projects (LAPs).

The Kung Fu Nuns are an order of Buddhist nuns who belong to the Drukpa Lineage, a thousand-year-old sect led by the Gyalwang Drukpa. Their name comes from the order’s proficiency in Chinese martial arts, which they began learning in 2008 after His Holiness the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa authorised a training program for them despite centuries-old Buddhist laws banning exercise for nuns.

The Drukpa nuns are best known for their social activism and humanitarian work. They also occupy leadership roles in their nunneries, performing basic trades and management skills that have long been banned for Buddhist women.

Sarthak Maggon is the Founder of Sarthak Maggon Law Offices, a Delhi based full-service law firm. Formerly associated with India’s top corporate law firm namely Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Company at their Bombay Offices, He has a rich and extensive understanding of corporate laws and has been promoting commercial setups in conflict-torn regions by utilizing his qualification from his international peace and conflict study background. Sarthak works closely with prison institutions and embassies for their policy restructuring and is one of the youngest lawyers working towards achieving corporation access to justice through disruptive legal interventions. His profile of startups include industries such as research and innovation, solar power, sustainable agriculture, artificial intelligence, and tourism. The vision of his firm is to create a conducive atmosphere for corporates to grow and flourish and to establish robust frameworks for strengthening internal and regulatory compliance policy for businesses.

Sahar is the founder of Bare Necessities, a social venture creating sustainable solutions and working towards a circular economy. Bare Necessities started in the pursuit of zero waste and living a lifestyle congruent to one’s values. Sahar felt overwhelmed with India’s trash problem. She spent time with local waste collectors and watched them sort through waste with their bare hands. This led her to think about the interconnectedness of environment, health and social justice issues.

Shobhit Mathur is an alumnus of IIT Bombay, University of Washington and Indian School of Business. Previously he has worked for Amazon.com in Seattle and served as the Joint National Organizing Secretary of Youth For Seva. Currently, he is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Vision India Foundation.

Chewang Motup Goba is the owner and founder of Rimo Expeditions, which is India's foremost organizer of treks and expeditions to the Himalayas. Formed in 1992 by Chewang Motup and Yangdu Gombu (a husband-and-wife team), Rimo Expeditions has established itself as a well-known innovator, with the ability to offer a wide range of activities and destinations, as well as being able to customize the experience for both large and small expeditions. 

Mr. Chewang Motup also started the Ladakh Marathon in 2012 to tell the world that Ladakh is up and running after the devastating flash floods of 2010. Motup believes in the potential of Ladakhis doing well in long distance races. In order to encourage such youth to take up running as a sport, he has ensured that there is maximum participation of young Ladakhis in the Marathon. The Ladakh Marathon is now an Internationally recognized marathon and has become a “must run” for elite runners from around the world.

Mr. Motup is also involved in promoting ice hockey as a recreational sport to negotiate the long, cold winters of Ladakh. The sport got a huge boost when he got in touch with the National Hockey League Players’ Association (NHLPA) who very generously donated over 50 pairs of Ice hockey gear in 2003. These were the first ever Ice Hockey gear to land in India for the Ladakh Winter Sports Club, Leh. 

Motup is a member of Jammu and Kashmir State Tourism Advisory Committee. He is also actively involved in lobbying for policy changes at the central, state and local levels to ensure the growth of adventure travel and tourism. He is a member of the Alpine Club UK, American Alpine Club and an honorary member of the Yorkshire Ramblers’ Club.

In 2020, Mr. Motup received the prestigious Padma Shri Award in the field of Trade & Industry. The Padma Awards are one of India’s highest civilian honours and are conferred in various fields, including trade and industry.

Mr. Dorjey Namgyal is a Bhoti teacher and has more than 19 years of teaching experience. He has a Masters degree in History from Punjab University and has worked as a resource person for lectures on Buddhism. Occasionally, he also serves as a monastic/history guide.

Leh Nutrition Project (LNP) was established in 1979 by Save the Children Fund (UK) as a supplementary nutrition project in the Leh District. The focus of the organisation has always been on improvng the socio-economic, educational and health status of children, women and other marginalised groups in village communities. Eshey Paljor has been Executive Director in the organisation since 2013. Chotak Gyatso is Programme Manager at LNP, and oversees the Child Protection programme supported by UNICEF. He is also a trained pharmacist, a traditional Amchi practitioner.

Ambassador P. Stobdan is a distinguished academician, diplomat, author and national security expert. He began his career as a security analyst in 1989 at the Institute for Defence Studies & Analyses (IDSA), where he reached to the topmost academic position of Senior Fellow in 2005. Ambassador Stobdan is a specialist on Asian affairs covering Central Asia and Inner Asia, including Xinjiang, Tibet, Myanmar, and the Himalayan region. He has written extensively on a wide range of security-related subjects in a number of professional journals on strategic affairs, books, and newspapers both in India and abroad. He served in Central Asia twice, as Director at the Embassy of India, Almaty (1999 and 2002) and Ambassador at the Embassy of India, Bishkek (2010-2012). He has also served as Joint Director in the Indian National Security Council. Between October 2006 and November 2007, he was Director of the Centre for Strategic and Regional Studies at the University of Jammu. He is a member of the India International Centre, New Delhi.

A former product head at an e-learning company, Utsow Pradhan, from Kurseong, left a promising corporate career to find his true calling in permaculture farming. A pioneering social entrepreneur and one amongst the very few permaculture practitioners in Darjeeling Hills, Utsow is also a trained mountaineer from the prestigious Nehru Institute of Mountaineering, Uttarakhand. Along with some friends, he runs TIEEDI (Take it Easy, Easy Does It), an eco-tourism project in Darjeeling, and is associated with several environmental projects like river rejuvenation and anti-pollution campaigns.

Anirudh Rastogi is the founder of Ikigai Law, an award-winning, 30-member law and public policy firm, with a sharp focus on technology businesses. Its clients include Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Udacity, Swiggy, Mobikwik, Sequoia Capital, Niti Aayog, Drone Federation of India and IAMAI. He was named “Achiever of the Year 2017” by Business World magazine for his work on India’s emerging space industry, including his advice to Team Indus for their proposed lunar mission in partnership with ISRO. The Economic Times named him a “pioneer” for his contribution to India’s unmanned aviation policy that opened up the skies for the industry after a multi-year ban. Likewise, he was instrumental in the reversal of the RBI ban on the cryptocurrency industry by the Supreme Court.

In addition to being a visiting faculty at IIM-Indore, he has also authored a book on Cyber Laws. Anirudh graduated from Harvard Law School and National Law Institute University. He was a mentor with Ashoka University’s AIM smart-city accelerator.

His Eminence the 8th Chokyong Palga Rinpoche (born 1984) is a philosopher and a tulku of the Drukpa (Dragon) lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. Rinpoche was born amid various apparently miraculous and auspicious omens, such as multiple rainbows with light drizzle on a clear day, and being completely covered in amniotic membrane (caul), with his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck multiple times, like a white silk scarf (considered a very auspicious symbol by the people of Himalayan kingdoms).

HE has travelled across the world, learning different cultures, and is now back to his homeland, Ladakh to give back to his people.

Ashima is the co-founder of Paushtaa, a healthy bakery range creating an outlet for the organic farmers to go up the value chain and connect to the urban consumers. She was also the Chief Coordinator at Toybank India where she founded the Bhutan chapter of the Toybank.

She was an independent researcher at the Organic Agriculture for small farmers in India. A national expert on an international action-research project on CSR and SMEs at the UNIDO.

Anuj Sharma is the Founder of Local Guy, a web-based portal which connects micro entrepreneurs of tier 1 and tier 2 cities to give travelers an experience of unexplored local experience in a city/village. He has been an entrepreneur right from his college life when he started Geek Pro a solution that was a hostel experiment for software and computer-based market.

He also founded bhaaiji.com, which was about enabling the customer to order directly from vendors they trust and also discover local deals. He has also received the Annual State Entrepreneurship Award 2018 by Himachal government for his startup idea Local Guy.

Mr. Sunish Sharma is founder, managing partner and co-CEO of Kedaara Capital Advisors LLP, a private equity fund pursuing control and minority investment opportunities in India. Kedaara partners with strong entrepreneurs and management teams to build enduring value and offers solution-oriented capital combining deep strategic and operational expertise in focused sectors along with global connectivity to deliver superior returns.

Before Kedaara, Sunish served as an MD at General Atlantic (GA), where he was one of the senior-most members of the India investment team. Sunish is a gold medalist from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta where he did his MBA after graduating with honours from University of Delhi. He has over 23 years of industry experience primarily encompassing the full life-cycle of private equity in India across financial, consumer and business services, technology and healthcare. Before GA, he worked as a management consultant at McKinsey India for over six years.

Co-Founder, FillMyFork

Kartik Shastri has been an entrepreneur for over five years in Silicon Valley, focused on creating sustainable change for individuals and communities. Kartik co-founded FillMyFork, a healthcare startup that incentivized healthy food choices. In his entrepreneurial work, Kartik has won numerous accolades, including selection for Alchemist Accelerator’s Class XII, seed investment at the TiE Shark Tank, and the Jung Hyun Oh Schramm Director’s Design award. He holds a Master’s in Engineering Management specializing in creativity, innovation, and leadership from Cornell University. As an undergraduate at Cornell, he triple majored in Materials Science, Economics, and Asian Studies, graduating magna cum laude for his senior thesis on the relevance of Indian philosophy in today’s world. Kartik plays the guitar, loves Bhangra and is a keen practitioner of meditation.

Graduate in Ayurvedic Medicine and post-graduate in Hindi Literature, Rajendra Singh is the chairman of Tarun Bharat Sangh. Since 1985, under his dynamic leadership, TBS has been working tirelessly to restore life and hope in the barren lands of Rajasthan. 

Singh is the recipient of Stockholm Water Prize 2015; an award known as the 'Nobel Prize for Water'. He has been honoured by Asia’s most prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award 2001 for Community Leadership. He also received India’s most prestigious Jamnalal Bajaj Award in 2005. 

Popularly known as 'Waterman of India', Rajendra Singh is also at the helm of a national network of organisations working on water issues, Rashtriya Jal Biradari. This network is working for the restoration of all big and small rivers in India.

Founder & CEO, Full Circle

Sunita Thawani has 25+ years of rich legal working experience. She conducts statutorily mandatory workshops on awareness of Sexual Harassment for employees including senior management and orientation and skill-building program for Internal Committee members on the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013. In these highly interactive workshops, she combines her unique combination of legal knowledge, deep interest in gender issues with practical experience. Her illustrious career has won her the Woman of the Year National Award 2017 and the WILL Women Choice National Award 2010.

Co-Founder & Former CEO, nearbuy.com

Warikoo is the founder and CEO of nearbuy. Nearbuy was erstwhile Groupon India, where Warikoo was the CEO. In August 2015, the Groupon India management pulled off a management buyout, partnering with Sequoia Capital – to create India’s largest Online to Offline (O2O) player.

Prior to this, Warikoo was Head of Groupon APAC Emerging Markets, overlooking India, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines

Ankur was Venture Partner at Rocket Internet Gmbh. Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Berlin, Rocket supports internet startups in more than twenty countries around the world.

Ankur is also Co-founder of Accentium Web – an Internet products company formed by 3 ISBians (Vivek Pahwa – CEO, Umang Kumar and Warikoo). He exited the venture after 3.5 years in October 2010. Accentium had an exit through Gaadi.com

Natasha Zarine is the founder and managing director of CARPE, a non-profit that builds evidence-driven solutions to civic and environmental challenges in Aurangabad and beyond with government and industry partners. The organization has successfully implemented solid waste management interventions in three cities across Maharashtra and is currently expanding to 15 districts. 

Natasha also co-founded Eco-Sattva Environmental Solutions, which provides ecological sewage treatment coupled with eco-scaping, a process that combines landscape architecture and environmental science to create sustainable design.