Our Board of Trustees

Bachendri Pal

Bachendri Pal, the first Indian woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest is trained by the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering (NIM), where she was judged the best student in the course. She was born in a village of Uttarkashi District and in 1984, she scaled the world’s highest peak with a team comprising seven women and eleven men. After battling an avalanche and a series of injuries, she stood on the summit of Sagarmatha (the Nepali name for the highest peak in the world) at 1:07 pm on May 23, 1984.

She has been scaling new heights since then by training other people and motivating young generation in the different countries in Europe and USA. She is a true inspiration for youth and especially for girls. Among Ms. Pal’s distinct strengths have been her positive attitude and very strong willpower. On her first trek to Everest at the attitude of 24,000 feet an avalanche buried the entire camp and she was injured on her head. The group, all males except for her, had been seriously distressed by this disaster. All of them decided to head back home after the extraordinary narrow-escape.

She has been scaling new heights. Today Ms. Pal feels that adventure leads to self-awareness and teaches people to develop self confidence and self respect. She finds it particularly relevant for the trainees at Tata Steel who attend the courses at the Foundation.

Chandan Singh Rana

Chandan S. Rana is a visionary and an action oriented local community leader. He lives in Raithal village and has over 30 years of experience in public affairs and leading community governance bodies in the Gangotri region. He has a deep understanding of local economic and cultural issues. Mr. Rana has been working for the establishment of a sustainable tourism program in the Dayara region. He revived and protected several good cultural practices including festivals such as Anduri Utsav (butter festival). Mr. Rana is the president of the Dayara Prayatan Utsav Samiti and has been an inspiration for the youth in Uttarkashi district.

Cyril R. Raphael

Cyril Raphael has been working for the development of the Uttarakhand region for last 25 years. With a huge experience of living, studying and working in various countries, cultures, continents and professions, Cyril supports a number of initiatives and institutions in this mountain region. He is the co-founder and currently chief advisor of Shri Bhuvneshwari Mahila Ashram (SBMA) one of the largest grassroots organization of Northern India.

Dan Jantzen

Dan was lucky to grow up in the Himalaya, attending Woodstock School in Mussoorie from KG through high school. He’s an engineer by training, and has worked on small-scale energy and development projects in Nepal, India, Afghanistan, Tibet and Pakistan. Through these jobs and other personal travel he’s explored the Himalaya from one end to the other. He particularly likes to read the reports of the early explorers to an area, and then visit the same area to see what changes have taken place in the intervening years.

Dan is semi-retired and lives in Denver, Colorado, but spends many months each year traveling, often in the Himalaya. He has a special affection for the people and mountains of Uttarakhand, and looks for ways to encourage local people in improving things in their new state.

Kevin Starr

Kevin Starr runs the Mulago Foundation and is the founder and director of the Rainer Arnhold Fellows Program. Mulago works like a social impact venture fund to seed and grow the most promising solutions in health, development, and conservation in settings of poverty. Mulago’s investment portfolio is intended as 1) an exemplary collection of scalable ideas and the organizations that can deliver them, and 2) a platform to spread the notion that that investing for impact is both imperative and doable.

The Fellows program is an outgrowth of the Foundation, and works with some of the best social entrepreneurs working in the developing world to maximize their impact through a structured evolution of project design. Both the Foundation and Fellows program are built around a systematic way to evaluate and design for real impact that will scale up.

Kevin has been doing this work since 1995 and is currently – and closely – involved with more than 30 organizations around the world: from mothers teaching each other how save their children’s lives in Indonesia to stopping poaching by helping farmers in Zambia. He originally trained as a physician and continues to practice medicine (very) part-time.

Further information about the Rainer Arnhold Fellows Program can be found at www.rainerfellows.org

Manisha Gupta

Manisha Founded StartUp! in 2007 and is based in Delhi. She has 20 years cumulative experience in the print media and civil society sector of India. Manisha started her career as a journalist and moved to the CSO sector with Ashoka: Innovators for the Public where she worked for nine years. While at Ashoka she led the India program and developed new initiatives focused on youth social entrepreneurs. Manisha led the due diligence for the ‘Social Entrepreneur’ of the Year Award in India. In 2006 she authored a book on CHILDLINE – The counties largest Child Rights movement. Manisha has served as advisor and consultant to several social entrepreneurs and their organizations.

Priya Vishjwanath

Priya Viswanath, Chief Executive of Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) India & Founder of Catalyst-Social Development Consultants has been working with social development issues in India for 15 years. Her primary areas of focus have been promoting public-private partnerships that have a positive impact on the development landscape in India and promoting and facilitating global giving. Priya has been leading CAF India’s operations since 2003. Prior to joining CAF she worked on promoting Education and Literacy initiatives for members of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the apex chamber of Commerce and Industry in India. Consulting with several global foundations – Give2Asia, United Way she helped set up their India initiatives; she has also consulted on projects and initiatives sponsored by The Ford Foundation, The Commonwealth Foundation, and several bilateral and multilateral organizations, including the UNFPA, DFID and others. She is a published author on Indian and global philanthropy with specific focus on Asia.
Priya is a Governing Council member and Director of the Asia Pacific Philanthropy Consortium (APPC) and Chairs the Taskforce on Financial Sustainability and Diaspora Philanthropy. She is also an Advisory Council member of the Kenan Institute, Asia. She is a Senior Fellow of the Synergos Institute’s Senior Fellows program.

At CAF India, Priya in addition to her operational role works with multinational companies and overseas donors advising them on Corporate Community Investments (CCI) and incubating new philanthropic vehicles and projects.

During her time at CAF India, she has helped leverage and brought on board several leading multinationals – Adobe, Microsoft, Baxter, Ernst & Young, American Express and others. The Tsunami Rebuilding Lives Fund which she set up after the devastating Tsunami has been a lifeline for many and is a model of good practice. The inspired dream for capacity building by supporting and training NGO leaders in India has been achieved through the Community Leadership Experience launched in partnership with UBS in September 2008. It is a model UBS is replicating in Asia.

Prof. P.C. Joshi

Prof. P.C Joshi is professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Delhi. He further specialized in vital areas of knowledge and praxis, like counseling, healthcare of unstable populations, in unstable situations and complex emergencies, and assessing public health in emergency situations. He was a student and later visiting faculty at renowned institutions like the Dept. of Tropical Hygiene and Public Health, University of Heidelberg, Germany and Universite Catholique de Louvain (UCL), Brussels, Belgium. Among other various national and international awards, honors and distinctions, Prof. Joshi also has to his credit, the discovery of a Paleolithic site in Delhi that he found in 1983. Professor Joshi has great interest in the folklore of medicinal plants in the Himalayas.