CILS 5 BIOs
(Arranged in the alphabetical order of the last name)
Soumik Banerjee
Independent Researcher and Practitioner of Agro-ecology & Heirloom Seed Conservation. Currently engaged in conservation research of Indigenous varieties & Landraces of field crops through In-situ Conservation with farmer groups in eastern & central India. Working with Adivasi communities practicing Shifting Cultivation in eastern & central India towards Guided Fallow and Forest Gardens. Post Graduate in Biotechnology (Univ of Pune) & Forest Management (IIFM-Bhopal). Graduate in Chemistry (Univ of Delhi).
Rita Banerji
Founder and Project Director of the Green Hub Project, Rita is one of the leading environment filmmakers in India and an Ashoka Fellow https://www.ashoka.org/en-in/fellow/rita-banerji). Her work is grounded in using visual communication as a tool for conservation-based storytelling. She has been part of three Panda award winning films, including ‘The Wild Meat Trail’ in 2010, that kickstarted the outreach work in the northeast of india. She was awarded the National Geographic - CMS Prithvi Ratna award in 2017 and the RBS Earth Hero award in 2018 for her contribution to environment conservation through films. Rita also loves sports, listening to music, travelling, reading graphic novels and drinking tea.
Ameen Charles
CDC is a nonprofit organization working in the Balaghat, Seoni, and Mandla districts of Madhya Pradesh State; the organization was established in 2003 by three like-minded people. CDC actively supports and works towards a just and sustainable society by creating conditions for meaningful and disciplined involvement of all people and their organizations in the development process. It is based on a macro approach and involves organizations networking at appropriate levels.
Yashwardhan Dalmia
Over the past 6+ years, I have worked in the space of environmental conservation as a corporate social responsibility professional and as a tour leader and educator in the wildlife travel sector. As a part of these roles, I have had the privilege of working alongside some very passionate and inspirational individuals working towards the common goal of environmental protection.Some key projects that I have been a part of include biodiversity conservation project in central India and marine conservation & plastic pollution prevention project in Mumbai. Currently, as the Network support officer for the SLTP, I help with facilitating communication and coordination between partners in addition to monitoring program activities, capturing success stories and effectively disseminating details about activities of partnership through various mediums.
Upasana Ganguly
Upasana Ganguly heads the Right of Passage: Wildlife Corridors Project at Wildlife Trust of India. Her conservation interest has primarily been in landscape ecology and connectivity conservation for large mammals like Asian Elephants and Tigers. She is one of the co-authors for the Right of Passage publication- a blueprint to secure 101 Elephant Corridors across India. She also leads a network of Green Corridor Champions- partnering with and empowering local community-based organizations and individuals for protecting elephant corridors and habitats across India. She is a member of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas and its Connectivity Conservation Specialist Group. She is also a member of the Ecological Restoration Alliance- a group of organisations and individuals directly engaged in fostering the practice of ecological restoration and generating knowledge about ecosystem restoration. Part of her work also involves forging international collaborations and mobilizing funding support through foundations and charities for the wildlife corridors projects at WTI.
Kedar Gore
With over two decades of experience in biodiversity conservation, human-wildlife conflict mitigation and environment education, he is a Member of the IUCN - Commission on Education and Communication, Species Survival Commission (Bustard Specialist Group) and World Commission on Protected Areas. He has worked with WWF-India and TERI in the past and is on the Governing Council of the BNHS in an honorary capacity. He has been associated with The Corbett Foundation since 2009.
Parul Gurjar
Dr. Parul Gurjar has experience working as Subject Expert in Environmental Planning Coordination Organization (EPCO), State Environment Department, Madhya Pradesh. She is soon joining NABARD, Lucknow as Subject Matter Specialist (Climate Change).
At EPCO, she has worked on the capacity building and training of forest officials about sustainability, climate change, environmental conservation, and related issues. She has done her Ph.D. from the Department of Environmental Science and Limnology, Barkatullah University, Bhopal with expertise in the River Health Assessment of the Central Indian Riverscape and developed the Integrated River Health Assessment System (IRHAS).
She has Qualified UGC National Eligibility Test (NET) in Environmental Science subject. She has been associated with an International project on Science popularization, Biodiversity education, and conservation. She has worked with several organizations and conducted environmental events related to ecology, biodiversity, and environmental awareness for students of schools and, colleges, universities.
Prajakta Hushnagabadkar
Prajakta completed her undergraduate study (B.Sc.) in Agriculture Science and followed it up with M.Sc. in Wildlife Biology. To go beyond the conventional curriculum, she began involving herself with nature trails and photography initially, and then went on to become a part of several short-term voluntary assignments broadly related to the field of wildlife and conservation. To gain an understanding of conservation issues, she participated in various research projects across India. Her active participation and regular interaction with conservationists, field biologists and social researchers made her realize the complexities behind the word “coexistence”.
She began to realize that instead of thinking of wild spaces as isolated fragments, we need to better understand the delicate threads that connect them to the most vulnerable sections of society – the indigenous communities. Eventually, she began working as a Wildlife Biologist at Pench Tiger Reserve foundation, Maharashtra after working for 2 years, later she joined as a Project Officer in the Species and Landscape Conservation Division of WWF-India. She is currently working with Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve as Wildlife Biologist. Greater Tadoba ( including adjoining areas with TATR) presently has high conflict and disperse tiger individuals venturing into human-dominated landscapes are causing the conflict in adjoining areas of TATR. While last two years doing research in greater tadoba landscape, she observed that people and wildlife, including large carnivores, had been cohabiting in these landscapes for generations. She also noticed that communities in this belt community had a higher dependence on the forest and its produce has an immense impact on habitat. But at the same time, communities are receiving livelihood through eco-tourism activities. She was always surprised by the adaptation power of the people cohabitating with wildlife. She emphasises her study, which will help for the better management and planning of the mitigation measures in the Landscape. Being a DBF fellow she is studying human perception in the TATR-NNTR corridor. Her project title ''A paradigm shift in connectivity planning: Win-win situation for wildlife and people" aims to understand the human perception and attitude of villagers in the Tadoba –Navegaon-Nagzira corridor for improvement in connectivity planning and conservation.
Pooja Iyengar
Pooja Iyengar has done her schooling from St. Joseph’s Convent School, Bhopal. She further went on to do her graduation from Jesus and Mary College, Delhi University and has completed her masters in mass communication from AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia , New Delhi, where she has specialized in all aspects of documentary filmmaking and mass media communication. Ms Iyengar is the chairperson of Mahashakti Seva Kendra(MSK). An NGO established in 1992, for the empowerment and upliftment of ladies affected by the 1984 gas tragedy. The aim of the NGO is to economically empower women in marginalized communities so that they have gain agency and have a voice. She in her capacity manages a stitching and block printing unit of over 50 ladies from the slum community in Bhopal. Mahashakti also runs a computer center to encourage young girls to break the gender the barrier and build confidence through computer, English and soft skill learning. Mahashakti has also started a block printing on fabric with natural dyes unit in Jobat (Alirajpur) to skill adivasi women in the age old art of block printing. This is the first unit and one of its kind where adivasi women are getting training to learn organic printing. Mahashakti Seva Kendra has also partnered with Dustyfoot Foundation to start Green Hub (Central) in Bhopal, the program aims to engage, empower and digitally equip rural and tribal youth in conservation of biodiversity, traditional knowledge, natural resources and sustainable practices in four states of central India through an innovative skill and capacity building model, using digital media. The aim is to open avenues for wider exposure, agency, expression, and integration with local entrepreneurship, climate action and livelihood options. With an experience of more than a decade, Ms. Iyengar has worked on several feature length and short documentaries as a video editor. Due to a keen interest in wildlife and environment based issues; she has been mostly associated with documentaries film dealing with human-animal conflicts and the ever-pressing issue of climate change. Ms Iyengar is a multi-faceted personality with a keen interest in human lives, be it through the film medium or by personally engaging with the people through her NGO work.
Jagdish Krishnaswamy
Jagdish is a field ecohydrologist and a landscape ecologist with research and teaching interests in applied statistics, environmental applications of remote sensing and GIS, ecosystem services, ecological restoration, river ecology and climate change. He loves the challenge of understanding complex changes in the environment over time and space. He was the Coordinating Lead Author of the Special IPCC Report on Climate Change and Land.
Jagdish moves to IIHS from the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bengaluru where he has been a faculty member for over 20 years – and collaborated with IIHS teams on multiple projects. He began his career at Development Alternatives, New Delhi where he worked in sustainability and environment. He has been a faculty member at the Wildlife Institute of India and has also been an affiliate teaching faculty at the National Centre for Biological Sciences-TIFR (NCBS-TIFR), Bengaluru where he has been involved with the Masters Programme in Wildlife Biology and Conservation since its inception.
Manisha Motwani
Manisha Motwani is an Agricultural Engineer, working as a Senior Executive at Chhattisgarh Agricon Samiti in Raipur for the past two years. Her area of focus has been developing and managing sustainable and economical agricultural practices. Recently, she has concluded an intensive scoping study of the landscape in the economic zone of Kabirdham district. Her contributions and dedication to the work have proven to be of great use in understanding every detail of the area. During the study, her attention was drawn toward finding solutions for the existing Human-wildlife conflict, some of which she had observed during her visits to the field.
She has also been learning and contributing to several other projects running in the Bastar, Bijapur, Bilaspur, Kondagaon, and Kabirdham districts of Central India. She has done her Btech in Agriculture from Indra Gandhi Agriculture University, Raipur
Naveen Pandey
A former vet at Darjeeling Goodwill Animal Shelter in Kalimpong and Help In Suffering in Jaipur, he has been trained in the field of Conservation Medicine during his MVetSci at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, University of Edinburgh. He has been an Invited Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh since 2018 and is pursuing his Ph.D. from IIT, Guwahati. He has been associated with The Corbett Foundation since 2011.
Mandar Pingle
I would introduce myself as a wildlife conservationist. I have inherited the passion for wildlife from my parents who provided me the exposure to wildlife since my childhood. I have grown up in the tiger capital of our country – Nagpur (read Waghpur), Maharashtra. This early exposure to jungles of central Indian forests left a deep impression and I decided to pursue my passion as a full time career option. I have a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering (2008-2012, G.H.Raisoni College of Engineering, Nagpur). Thereafter, I joined the master’s program in Master of Science program in Geographical Information Systems at Florida State University, USA (2014-2016). As a part of my Master’s program at FSU, I got to explore how different GIS tools could be used for wildlife conservation applications.
I have been associated with Satpuda Foundation since 2013. I got an opportunity to work as Education Officer at Amalatas Tourist Interpretation center at Pench Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra where I contributed to gathering information related to the national park and sensitise public on various wildlife conservation issues. The stint lasted for 7 months post which I went on to pursue my Masters program at FSU. I decided to work for wildlife conservation for the rest of my life since returning back to India in 2016 and have been working with SF. I started as a Conservation Officer at Pench Tiger Reserve (Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh) working closely with the communities residing in the buffer area of the park and trying to address the issues related to wildlife conservation by running awareness campaigns, providing alternative livelihoods to communities and providing basic health care facilities to the communities. I was appointed as the member for the Local Advisory Committees of Pench Tiger Reserve in both Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. I also got the opportunity to work in the lesser known wildlife corridors connecting Pench-Bor tiger reserves for a project funded by IUCN and Maharashtra State forest department. Currently I am working with SF, as Assistant Director and looking after our community based conservation initiatives in central Indian landscape. I am sprearheading our GIS-Cell and assisiting in technological interventions in various grass-roots projects being implemented by SF. I have provided GIS support to decision making process at State Board for Wildlife (Maharashtra State) through Mr Kishor Rithe and office of Chief Wildlife Warden, Maharashtra State.
Pradyot Porwal
Worked in the global capital markets for a decade before pivoting to ecosystem restoration. Pradyot is based across Hong Kong and India, and is a graduate from IIM Bangalore and IIT Bombay
Sudarshan Shaw
Sudarshan Shaw is an artist and a visual designer. Inspired by various folk art forms of India, he creates visual narrations that are true to their land, locals and locality. Walks in the forests and interaction with ancient communities re-educated him about native art forms - their inventiveness, effectiveness and legacy. He hopes to bring back native art as the visual language of the country; as art of the people, by the people and for the people.
Deepak Singh
Deepak Singh is a Development professional working as a Landscape coordinator in CHiRP (Central Highlands Restoration Program) in the Kabirdham district of Chhattisgarh. His primary responsibility is co-initiating, coordinating, and supervising the Landscape restoration program in this Area and Stakeholders' engagement at all levels. He has a bachelor's in Electrical engineering from NIT Raipur and has experience in the development sector working in PRADAN for several years.
Prachi Thatte
Prachi Thatte is the coordinator for connectivity conservation at WWF-India and also coordinates a multi-NGO network called the Coalition for Wildlife Corridors. She did her Ph.D. on multi-species connectivity in central India.
Sejal Worah
Sejal Worah is the Programme Director with WWF India and has over 15 years' experience in participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation of conservation and development projects, programmes and strategies, at site, national and regional and eco-regional levels in a range of Asian and African countries. She has extensive experience in training and capacity building on topics related to participatory natural resource management, integrated conservation and development, participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation, participatory action research, community-based tourism, socio-economic and habitat surveys, and protected area management. She has also designed and conducted training for a range of target groups including local community members, extension workers, policy makers, NGOs, government officials and academics
(Arranged in the alphabetical order of the last name)
Soumik Banerjee
Independent Researcher and Practitioner of Agro-ecology & Heirloom Seed Conservation. Currently engaged in conservation research of Indigenous varieties & Landraces of field crops through In-situ Conservation with farmer groups in eastern & central India. Working with Adivasi communities practicing Shifting Cultivation in eastern & central India towards Guided Fallow and Forest Gardens. Post Graduate in Biotechnology (Univ of Pune) & Forest Management (IIFM-Bhopal). Graduate in Chemistry (Univ of Delhi).
Rita Banerji
Founder and Project Director of the Green Hub Project, Rita is one of the leading environment filmmakers in India and an Ashoka Fellow https://www.ashoka.org/en-in/fellow/rita-banerji). Her work is grounded in using visual communication as a tool for conservation-based storytelling. She has been part of three Panda award winning films, including ‘The Wild Meat Trail’ in 2010, that kickstarted the outreach work in the northeast of india. She was awarded the National Geographic - CMS Prithvi Ratna award in 2017 and the RBS Earth Hero award in 2018 for her contribution to environment conservation through films. Rita also loves sports, listening to music, travelling, reading graphic novels and drinking tea.
Ameen Charles
CDC is a nonprofit organization working in the Balaghat, Seoni, and Mandla districts of Madhya Pradesh State; the organization was established in 2003 by three like-minded people. CDC actively supports and works towards a just and sustainable society by creating conditions for meaningful and disciplined involvement of all people and their organizations in the development process. It is based on a macro approach and involves organizations networking at appropriate levels.
Yashwardhan Dalmia
Over the past 6+ years, I have worked in the space of environmental conservation as a corporate social responsibility professional and as a tour leader and educator in the wildlife travel sector. As a part of these roles, I have had the privilege of working alongside some very passionate and inspirational individuals working towards the common goal of environmental protection.Some key projects that I have been a part of include biodiversity conservation project in central India and marine conservation & plastic pollution prevention project in Mumbai. Currently, as the Network support officer for the SLTP, I help with facilitating communication and coordination between partners in addition to monitoring program activities, capturing success stories and effectively disseminating details about activities of partnership through various mediums.
Upasana Ganguly
Upasana Ganguly heads the Right of Passage: Wildlife Corridors Project at Wildlife Trust of India. Her conservation interest has primarily been in landscape ecology and connectivity conservation for large mammals like Asian Elephants and Tigers. She is one of the co-authors for the Right of Passage publication- a blueprint to secure 101 Elephant Corridors across India. She also leads a network of Green Corridor Champions- partnering with and empowering local community-based organizations and individuals for protecting elephant corridors and habitats across India. She is a member of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas and its Connectivity Conservation Specialist Group. She is also a member of the Ecological Restoration Alliance- a group of organisations and individuals directly engaged in fostering the practice of ecological restoration and generating knowledge about ecosystem restoration. Part of her work also involves forging international collaborations and mobilizing funding support through foundations and charities for the wildlife corridors projects at WTI.
Kedar Gore
With over two decades of experience in biodiversity conservation, human-wildlife conflict mitigation and environment education, he is a Member of the IUCN - Commission on Education and Communication, Species Survival Commission (Bustard Specialist Group) and World Commission on Protected Areas. He has worked with WWF-India and TERI in the past and is on the Governing Council of the BNHS in an honorary capacity. He has been associated with The Corbett Foundation since 2009.
Parul Gurjar
Dr. Parul Gurjar has experience working as Subject Expert in Environmental Planning Coordination Organization (EPCO), State Environment Department, Madhya Pradesh. She is soon joining NABARD, Lucknow as Subject Matter Specialist (Climate Change).
At EPCO, she has worked on the capacity building and training of forest officials about sustainability, climate change, environmental conservation, and related issues. She has done her Ph.D. from the Department of Environmental Science and Limnology, Barkatullah University, Bhopal with expertise in the River Health Assessment of the Central Indian Riverscape and developed the Integrated River Health Assessment System (IRHAS).
She has Qualified UGC National Eligibility Test (NET) in Environmental Science subject. She has been associated with an International project on Science popularization, Biodiversity education, and conservation. She has worked with several organizations and conducted environmental events related to ecology, biodiversity, and environmental awareness for students of schools and, colleges, universities.
Prajakta Hushnagabadkar
Prajakta completed her undergraduate study (B.Sc.) in Agriculture Science and followed it up with M.Sc. in Wildlife Biology. To go beyond the conventional curriculum, she began involving herself with nature trails and photography initially, and then went on to become a part of several short-term voluntary assignments broadly related to the field of wildlife and conservation. To gain an understanding of conservation issues, she participated in various research projects across India. Her active participation and regular interaction with conservationists, field biologists and social researchers made her realize the complexities behind the word “coexistence”.
She began to realize that instead of thinking of wild spaces as isolated fragments, we need to better understand the delicate threads that connect them to the most vulnerable sections of society – the indigenous communities. Eventually, she began working as a Wildlife Biologist at Pench Tiger Reserve foundation, Maharashtra after working for 2 years, later she joined as a Project Officer in the Species and Landscape Conservation Division of WWF-India. She is currently working with Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve as Wildlife Biologist. Greater Tadoba ( including adjoining areas with TATR) presently has high conflict and disperse tiger individuals venturing into human-dominated landscapes are causing the conflict in adjoining areas of TATR. While last two years doing research in greater tadoba landscape, she observed that people and wildlife, including large carnivores, had been cohabiting in these landscapes for generations. She also noticed that communities in this belt community had a higher dependence on the forest and its produce has an immense impact on habitat. But at the same time, communities are receiving livelihood through eco-tourism activities. She was always surprised by the adaptation power of the people cohabitating with wildlife. She emphasises her study, which will help for the better management and planning of the mitigation measures in the Landscape. Being a DBF fellow she is studying human perception in the TATR-NNTR corridor. Her project title ''A paradigm shift in connectivity planning: Win-win situation for wildlife and people" aims to understand the human perception and attitude of villagers in the Tadoba –Navegaon-Nagzira corridor for improvement in connectivity planning and conservation.
Pooja Iyengar
Pooja Iyengar has done her schooling from St. Joseph’s Convent School, Bhopal. She further went on to do her graduation from Jesus and Mary College, Delhi University and has completed her masters in mass communication from AJK MCRC, Jamia Millia Islamia , New Delhi, where she has specialized in all aspects of documentary filmmaking and mass media communication. Ms Iyengar is the chairperson of Mahashakti Seva Kendra(MSK). An NGO established in 1992, for the empowerment and upliftment of ladies affected by the 1984 gas tragedy. The aim of the NGO is to economically empower women in marginalized communities so that they have gain agency and have a voice. She in her capacity manages a stitching and block printing unit of over 50 ladies from the slum community in Bhopal. Mahashakti also runs a computer center to encourage young girls to break the gender the barrier and build confidence through computer, English and soft skill learning. Mahashakti has also started a block printing on fabric with natural dyes unit in Jobat (Alirajpur) to skill adivasi women in the age old art of block printing. This is the first unit and one of its kind where adivasi women are getting training to learn organic printing. Mahashakti Seva Kendra has also partnered with Dustyfoot Foundation to start Green Hub (Central) in Bhopal, the program aims to engage, empower and digitally equip rural and tribal youth in conservation of biodiversity, traditional knowledge, natural resources and sustainable practices in four states of central India through an innovative skill and capacity building model, using digital media. The aim is to open avenues for wider exposure, agency, expression, and integration with local entrepreneurship, climate action and livelihood options. With an experience of more than a decade, Ms. Iyengar has worked on several feature length and short documentaries as a video editor. Due to a keen interest in wildlife and environment based issues; she has been mostly associated with documentaries film dealing with human-animal conflicts and the ever-pressing issue of climate change. Ms Iyengar is a multi-faceted personality with a keen interest in human lives, be it through the film medium or by personally engaging with the people through her NGO work.
Jagdish Krishnaswamy
Jagdish is a field ecohydrologist and a landscape ecologist with research and teaching interests in applied statistics, environmental applications of remote sensing and GIS, ecosystem services, ecological restoration, river ecology and climate change. He loves the challenge of understanding complex changes in the environment over time and space. He was the Coordinating Lead Author of the Special IPCC Report on Climate Change and Land.
Jagdish moves to IIHS from the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bengaluru where he has been a faculty member for over 20 years – and collaborated with IIHS teams on multiple projects. He began his career at Development Alternatives, New Delhi where he worked in sustainability and environment. He has been a faculty member at the Wildlife Institute of India and has also been an affiliate teaching faculty at the National Centre for Biological Sciences-TIFR (NCBS-TIFR), Bengaluru where he has been involved with the Masters Programme in Wildlife Biology and Conservation since its inception.
Manisha Motwani
Manisha Motwani is an Agricultural Engineer, working as a Senior Executive at Chhattisgarh Agricon Samiti in Raipur for the past two years. Her area of focus has been developing and managing sustainable and economical agricultural practices. Recently, she has concluded an intensive scoping study of the landscape in the economic zone of Kabirdham district. Her contributions and dedication to the work have proven to be of great use in understanding every detail of the area. During the study, her attention was drawn toward finding solutions for the existing Human-wildlife conflict, some of which she had observed during her visits to the field.
She has also been learning and contributing to several other projects running in the Bastar, Bijapur, Bilaspur, Kondagaon, and Kabirdham districts of Central India. She has done her Btech in Agriculture from Indra Gandhi Agriculture University, Raipur
Naveen Pandey
A former vet at Darjeeling Goodwill Animal Shelter in Kalimpong and Help In Suffering in Jaipur, he has been trained in the field of Conservation Medicine during his MVetSci at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, University of Edinburgh. He has been an Invited Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh since 2018 and is pursuing his Ph.D. from IIT, Guwahati. He has been associated with The Corbett Foundation since 2011.
Mandar Pingle
I would introduce myself as a wildlife conservationist. I have inherited the passion for wildlife from my parents who provided me the exposure to wildlife since my childhood. I have grown up in the tiger capital of our country – Nagpur (read Waghpur), Maharashtra. This early exposure to jungles of central Indian forests left a deep impression and I decided to pursue my passion as a full time career option. I have a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering (2008-2012, G.H.Raisoni College of Engineering, Nagpur). Thereafter, I joined the master’s program in Master of Science program in Geographical Information Systems at Florida State University, USA (2014-2016). As a part of my Master’s program at FSU, I got to explore how different GIS tools could be used for wildlife conservation applications.
I have been associated with Satpuda Foundation since 2013. I got an opportunity to work as Education Officer at Amalatas Tourist Interpretation center at Pench Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra where I contributed to gathering information related to the national park and sensitise public on various wildlife conservation issues. The stint lasted for 7 months post which I went on to pursue my Masters program at FSU. I decided to work for wildlife conservation for the rest of my life since returning back to India in 2016 and have been working with SF. I started as a Conservation Officer at Pench Tiger Reserve (Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh) working closely with the communities residing in the buffer area of the park and trying to address the issues related to wildlife conservation by running awareness campaigns, providing alternative livelihoods to communities and providing basic health care facilities to the communities. I was appointed as the member for the Local Advisory Committees of Pench Tiger Reserve in both Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. I also got the opportunity to work in the lesser known wildlife corridors connecting Pench-Bor tiger reserves for a project funded by IUCN and Maharashtra State forest department. Currently I am working with SF, as Assistant Director and looking after our community based conservation initiatives in central Indian landscape. I am sprearheading our GIS-Cell and assisiting in technological interventions in various grass-roots projects being implemented by SF. I have provided GIS support to decision making process at State Board for Wildlife (Maharashtra State) through Mr Kishor Rithe and office of Chief Wildlife Warden, Maharashtra State.
Pradyot Porwal
Worked in the global capital markets for a decade before pivoting to ecosystem restoration. Pradyot is based across Hong Kong and India, and is a graduate from IIM Bangalore and IIT Bombay
Sudarshan Shaw
Sudarshan Shaw is an artist and a visual designer. Inspired by various folk art forms of India, he creates visual narrations that are true to their land, locals and locality. Walks in the forests and interaction with ancient communities re-educated him about native art forms - their inventiveness, effectiveness and legacy. He hopes to bring back native art as the visual language of the country; as art of the people, by the people and for the people.
Deepak Singh
Deepak Singh is a Development professional working as a Landscape coordinator in CHiRP (Central Highlands Restoration Program) in the Kabirdham district of Chhattisgarh. His primary responsibility is co-initiating, coordinating, and supervising the Landscape restoration program in this Area and Stakeholders' engagement at all levels. He has a bachelor's in Electrical engineering from NIT Raipur and has experience in the development sector working in PRADAN for several years.
Prachi Thatte
Prachi Thatte is the coordinator for connectivity conservation at WWF-India and also coordinates a multi-NGO network called the Coalition for Wildlife Corridors. She did her Ph.D. on multi-species connectivity in central India.
Sejal Worah
Sejal Worah is the Programme Director with WWF India and has over 15 years' experience in participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation of conservation and development projects, programmes and strategies, at site, national and regional and eco-regional levels in a range of Asian and African countries. She has extensive experience in training and capacity building on topics related to participatory natural resource management, integrated conservation and development, participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation, participatory action research, community-based tourism, socio-economic and habitat surveys, and protected area management. She has also designed and conducted training for a range of target groups including local community members, extension workers, policy makers, NGOs, government officials and academics
