Planet Impact

Gavin Thurston is the award-winning Blue Planet II and Planet Earth II cameraman who worked with Sir David Attenborough for over 20 projects. In this podcast, he shares with us the extraordinary and adventurous true stories of becoming a legendary cameraman. 

I met Gavin in Dubai on his book tour at Emirates Literature Festival, and instantly I was moved by his stories and his kind personality.

Gavin has been a wildlife photographer for over thirty years. Against a backdrop of modern world history, he's lurked in the shadows of some of the world's remotest places in order to capture footage of the animal kingdom's finest: prides of lions, silverback gorillas, capuchin monkeys, brown bears, grey whales, penguins, mosquitoes - you name it he's filmed it.

From journeys to the deepest depths of the Antarctic Ocean and the wide expanse of the Saharan deserts, to the peaks of the Himalayas and the wild forests of the Congo, Gavin's experiences describe much more than just the incredible array of animals he's filmed. He invites you to come inside the cameraman's hidden world and discover the hours spent patiently waiting for the protagonists to appear; the inevitable dangers in the wings and the challenges faced and overcome; and the heart-warming, life-affirming moments the cameras miss as well as capture.

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Personal Website: http://www.gavinthurston.com/

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Melati is an 19-year-old Indonesian/Dutch activist and an absolute change maker. She and her younger sister, Isabel, ounded Bye Bye Plastic Bags and have been leading the movement driven by youth since 2013. As of 2019, they successfully banned plastic bags, straws and Styrofoam on their home island Bali. 

She has spoken at TED and the United Nations and has also been selected among FORBES top ten most inspiring women in the country. She is very passionate about protecting the ocean; Alumni Member of the World’s Ocean Day Youth Advisory Council of the United Nations. Most recently, graduated from high school one year early at the Green School and has since been honoured by TIME as part of the annual list of most influential teens in the world along with CNN Heroes Young Wonders. Is launching a new youth empowerment project YOUTHTOPIA to empower youth through education and provide them with the tools they need to be change-makers.

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Sujay worked in IBM & Oracle for over 12 years, before founding iKure in 2010. The social venture was incepted with the vision to provide affordable and accessible, quality primary healthcare up to the last mile using technology intervention. Realizing that there will never be sufficient doctors to treat patients in India individually, iKure led by Sujay is changing the public healthcare system from an individualized curative model to a community based preventive healthcare system to ensure holistic well-being of communities. Within 9 years of its journey, iKure is catering to 8 million underserved people across seven states in India. Today, iKure is recognized as a prominent sustainable primary healthcare model in the world.

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Apply for internships with Ikure in finance, operations and data science by emailing them at contactusikurein

Taylor graduated from Harvard in 2015. When most of her friends were choosing jobs in finance and consulting, she decided to become a YouTuber.  On her first channel, YesReneau, she uses poetry, storytelling, and sit-down talks to help her subscribers better navigate the “real world”. On her second YT channel, Ivy Advise, she shares the content that will enable anyone to get into the Ivy League or any top-tier colleges in the USA. 

She has now created a course that prepares you for college applications by increasing your chances of getting into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell, UPenn, and other elite colleges (e.g. Stanford) by coaching you through the process. In order to best prepare students, it uses a hybrid approach of an online course plus individualized consulting.

Planet Impact listeners can use a special coupon code to get US$200 off on the Ivy Advise online course. The coupon code is PLANETIMPACT and it's limited to the first 20 students who enrol. Use this link to see the course and purchase it: https://ivyadvise.lpages.co/enrollivyadvise/

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Vikra Ijas is the co-founder and the Chief Marketing Officer at Kitabisa.com. His mission has been to leverage tech to connect and amplify kindness. 

Vikra graduated from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 2012 with a Bachelor's in Commerce specializing in Marketing and International Business. 

In 2013, along with his co-founder, Timur, Vikra established a social initiative called Kitabisa. It is an online fundraising and donation platform. When this podcast was recorded in 2019, Kitabisa had facilitated donations work USD 70 Million. The platform has become even more popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, as it now collaborates with major celebrities and media outlets for various fundraising projects. For instance, Kitabisa is a partner for online benefit concerts hosted by Narasi TV and Kompas TV, which managed to collect more than IDR 10 billion (USD 670,700) and IDR 7 billion (USD 469,500), respectively, and directed the money to vulnerable communities, such as informal workers whose income has evaporated because of social restrictions. In the last two months, Kitabisa channelled USD 10 million towards COVID-19 relief efforts. 

In this podcast, Vikra talks about the spirit of 'gotong royong' that means a collective action or sharing a burden within a community. He also talks about his journey, personally and professionally, of creating a bigger impact in a very warm and heartwarming fashion.

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Ms Aysha grew up in Lahore, Pakistan. She completed her BA in International Relations from Mount Holyoke College in 1995 on a scholarship and graduated Magna Cum Laude. Her time at college sparked her passion for development and she chose to return to Pakistan to work in the non-profit sector. She quickly learned that girls and women in villages needed access to economic resources before they could voice their demands for social justice. 

After completing her MBA from LUMS in 1998, she founded the Kaarvan Foundation, a pioneering economic development not-for-profit organization focused on poverty alleviation through the provision of business development and market-led training for girls and women. She headed the Kaarvan Foundation up to 2013 when relocated to Singapore. Here in Singapore in 2019, she wrote her debut novel, 'Beyond the Fields'. 

In part 2 of this podcast, we explore Ms Aysha's journey as an author where she shares the development of her book, the inspiration behind the characters in this story and most excitingly she narrates two important excerpts from her book. 

If you haven't heard the first part of this episode, we will highly recommend you to go back and listen to it. 

About the book: Beyond the Fields is a gripping tale of resilience and reclaiming honour in which the rape of a fifteen-year-old girl living in a remote village of Pakistan drives her twin sister on a dangerous quest for justice. Set in the early 1980s against the backdrop of martial law and social turmoil, beyond the Fields, brings up close the fears and hopes of women in Pakistan. Born to a poor, landless farmer in the month of the monsoon rains, twins Zara and Tara grow up amongst the fields of wheat and cotton in a remote village in Pakistan. During an afternoon spree of games, Tara is kidnapped from the fields and raped. All seems to be resolved after her parents accept an unexpected marriage proposal for their "dishonoured" daughter. But the nightmare resurfaces when a newspaper clipping emerges, calling the union into question. Determined to rescue her twin, Zara embarks on a harrowing quest for justice, battling keepers of a culture that upholds propriety above all else and braving the unknown dangers of an urban centre.

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Miriam is a best-selling author of the book 'Woman in Wilderness'. She lives with her husband in the New Zealand wilderness, surviving in extreme conditions by hunting wild animals and foraging edible plants. Miriam Lancewood has given up all modern-day comforts to live life right on the edge and off-grid.

Her book, now translated in many languages, is her story of living six years in the wilderness with her husband. In 2017, Miriam and Peter left New Zealand to explore other wild places. They walked 2000 km through the forest of Europe and along the coast of Turkey, mostly camping under trees and cooking by fire. It's a gripping story about life and death, courage and the power of love.

In this podcast, we dive deeper into her life in isolation and wilderness. It's her untold story from a youth-olympian, travelling through Africa, India, South-east Asia and living in New Zealand as a nomad with her husband. 

Interestingly, we met at the Emirates Dubai Literature Festival in February 2020 and became good friends. 

Recommendations: 

Links: 

https://miriamlancewood.com/

Jared is the USA Today's 'Most Connected Millennial'. He is the founder of Meetings of the Mind (motm.co). He has also a TED Speaker and has authored two best-selling books '3 Billion Under 30' and '2 Billion Under 20'. 

His invite-only mastermind community, Meeting of the Minds, curates top entrepreneurs, CEOs, and business owners for quarterly summits in places like Napa Valley, Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, and Bermuda. Members of this network (typically operating 7-figure businesses with no outside investors) enjoy more predictable revenue, increased profitability, and sustainable growth for their companies in addition to new life-long friendships and long-term business partnerships. 

Recommendations: 

Books- Napolean Hills 'The Law of Success'.