Planet Impact

Ms Samira Khan is the Senior Manager at Salesforce.org, USA. She works at the intersection of social impact and tech at Salesforce.org. She had been focused on impact management, the SDGs, and vulnerable populations. Samira has worked on global social impact and innovation across corporations, governments, and the social sector for over twelve years. Her work spans the Americas, the Middle East, and Asia. She is a former strategy & management consultant at Accenture; and while with A.T. Kearney in Southeast Asia, played a leading role in starting their social impact organization. Samira is also passionate about youth empowerment toward the SDGs and gender. 

Privately, Samira Khan is an aspiring creative writer and international traveller. She has an interest in learning more about other cultures and holistic living. She is the mother of three daughters, including identical twins. She holds a Master's in Public Policy from Harvard University and Bachelor's of Science from Stanford University in Management Science and Engineering.

A global citizen, She currently lives in California, USA, and has roots in Pakistan and India. Formerly, she has lived in the UK, UAE, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Hong Kong. She is a dear friend of the Planet Impact Podcast family.

Recommendations-

Books: 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' by Milan Kundera, 'Thrive' by Arianna Huffington, and 'Big Magic' by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Contact: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samiraakhan/

Email: samiraakhan <@> gmail com

Arijit Patra is a PhD student at the University of Oxford. He is one of the few recipients of the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. 

He works at the intersection of Machine Learning for diagnosis of Fetal Echocardiography. He graduated from IIT-Kharagpur with degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering. Order of Merit, Social & Cultural, IIT Kharagpur. In his tenure there, he won the prestigious Honda Scholarship to study and work in the University of Tokyo.  

He is passionate about helping marginalised communities with coding and education and travelling. 

Having just finished his Ph. D, from Oxford University in Environmental Engineering. He studies machine learning and biomechanical models for diagnosis of fetal echocardiography videos to predict Congenital Heart Diseases and associated pathological anomalies. His recent work has expanded into the inclusion of sonographer eye fixations as a proxy for expert knowledge incorporation in machine learning for medical imaging, Besides consideration of algorithmic bias, fairness and interpretability in medical image analysis. 

He came to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar (one of the 89 elected worldwide for the class of 2016).

Contact: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arijit-patra-92a18457/

Ph. D. Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford.

Bonnie is a Forbes 30 Under 30 social entrepreneur, a gender equality advocate and a social impact consultant. 

"Everything happens for a reason. We don't have to force things too much; we should be open to what the universe is giving us."

She was born in Hong Kong. She holds an MSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics, and a BBA in Global Business Studies with First Honours from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, in collaboration with Copenhagen Business School and University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill). 

She is the Founder and CEO of Lensational, which has expanded to a team of 120 volunteers – has taught photography to over 1,000 women across 23 countries. She also serves as the Managing Director of The Social Investment Consultancy, an internationally impact advisory firm, with a focus on gender and diversity within impact investing. A recognised advocate for gender equality, she has been profiled as the Ambassador for Sustainable Development Goal 5 – Achieve Gender Equality - in the Lavazza Calendar. 

A global citizen, I have roots in Hong Kong and Indonesia and have lived in the US, Singapore, Pakistan, Denmark, Germany and currently, she is based in the UK. She is a dear friend of the Planet Impact Podcast family.

Recommendations-

Books: 'The Diary of Anne Frank', and 'From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia' by Pankaj Mishra. 

Contact: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/bonniesychiu/ 

Email: [email protected] // [email protected]

Volunteer and Intern with Lensational. They are looking for people for Business Development. [email protected]

Pablo is the founder of Bridges for Billions (https://bridgeforbillions.org/), one of the worlds best social entrepreneurship programs backed by the United Nations, Coca-Cola, Brown and MIT University amongst many others. 

Pablo is an entrepreneurship and innovation geek, Forbes 30 under 30, and Ashoka Fellow, who’s driven by his desire to make all that he’s learned available to everyone. He graduated from Brown University and Carnegie Mellon University. His story is truly mind-blowing!

Contact: LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablosantaeufemia/

Pablo was born in Madrid, Spain, in a relatively low-income family. His father passed away when he was 13. He got a scholarship to go to highschool at UWC-USA. He was always a good student. After high school, he took a gap year, volunteered in an NGO in India,  and got a scholarship to study in a peculiar summer program where he lived on a Ship and travelled the world. For college, he got a full scholarship from Brown University to study mechanical engineering. He went to an exchange program in China, spoke fluent Chinese and worked there. Later, he did a dual masters from Carnegie Mellon University, worked at the UN and started the award-winning 'Bridge for Billions' in 2013. Bridge for Billions is a global digital ecosystem of entrepreneurship programs that help early-stage entrepreneurs worldwide to structure, develop and refine their businesses. Learn more about his life and exciting projects in this podcast.

Recommendations: Books: The Business Solution to Poverty by Paul Polak.

Devika is the co-founder of Wheeling Happiness Foundation, the Queen’s Young Leader Awardee 2015, UN Women Transforming India winner, Global Happiness Leader and Forbes 30 under 30 awardee 2020. 

"One mistake that many of us make is equating disability with inability. Sometimes, we disqualify people just by assuming that they will be unable to perform a certain task." 

Born a premature baby with acute neonatal jaundice and hemiplegia, Devika Malik was paralysed on one side of the body. Despite her disability, nothing could stop Devika from becoming an international para-athlete. In five years (2011-2016), she won eight national and three international medals in para-athletics. 

She is trained as a Psychologist. With her mother, Padma Sri Deepa Malik, she started 'Wheeling Happiness Foundation' which is an NGO working to ensure an inclusive world & enable people with disabilities to achieve their potential. As part of their COVID response, Wheeling Happiness is supporting underprivileged families of people with disabilities with dry rations, sanitary kits & cash in hand. Today they are also providing cooked meals and free telephonic counselling. 

Contact: Instagram @devikamalik394 @wheelinghappiness

Twitter: @devikamalik394

https://wheelinghappiness.org/

Sumitra Pasupathy is the Senior Manager of Global Partnership at Ashoka. 

"I am always looking for inspiring, bright and young interns"

About Sumitra: She grew up in Kaula Lampur, Malaysia. She graduated as a chemical engineer from the prestigious Cambridge University in 1995. She worked at Kraft and Proctor and Gamble before getting an MBA from INSEAD. Afterwards, she worked in the corporate world for a few years, mainly out of Singapore, before entering the impact and social entrepreneurship world upon the birth of her first son.

In 2008, she and her partner Mr Naveen Menon founded Playeum. It's an independent non-profit organisation that champions children through play and creativity. And it has won several international awards for its groundbreaking work.

In 2015, she became the country director of Ashoka: Innovators for Public for Singapore and Indonesia. Ashoka is the world's fifth-biggest NGO that is responsible for the 'social entrepreneurs' movement in the world (Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka, literally coined the term 'Social Entrepreneurship' in 1980). 

Currently, she is the senior manager of Global Collaborations at Ashoka. She lives in Singapore with her husband and three- very talented tennis champ- sons. 

Recommendations:

Sumitra Pasupathy is the Senior Manager of Global Partnership at Ashoka.  

"I am always looking for inspiring, bright and young interns" 

Email Ashoka Singapore at [email protected] Follow Sumitra on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/sumitra-pasupathy-56291/ 

About Sumitra: She grew up in Kaula Lampur, Malaysia. She graduated as a chemical engineer from the prestigious Cambridge University in 1995. She worked at Kraft and Proctor and Gamble before getting an MBA from INSEAD. Afterward, she worked in the corporate world for a few years, mainly out of Singapore, before entering the impact and social entrepreneurship world upon the birth of her first son. 

In 2008, she and her partner, Mr. Naveen Menon, started Playeum. It's an independent non-profit organisation that champions children through play and creativity. And it has won several international awards for its groundbreaking work. 

In 2015, she became the country director of Ashoka: Innovators for Public for Singapore and Indonesia. Ashoka is the world's fifth-biggest NGO that is responsible for the 'social entrepreneurs' movement in the world (Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka, literally coined the term 'Social Entrepreneurship' in 1980).  Currently, she is the senior manager of Global Collaborations at Ashoka. She lives in Singapore with her husband and three- very talented tennis champ- sons.  

Recommendations:

Federico Garcea (@federico_garcea) is the founder and CEO of Treedom (@treedom_trees)- Financial Times Top 100 most sustainable companies in Europe, and an Ashoka Fellow from Florence, Italy. This UN World Environment Day, Federico tells us his story from being a financial analyst to being the founder of the B-Corporation which has been saving the planet one tree at a time. 

Federico did a lot of odd jobs before he stumbled upon the idea of Treedom. The main source of inspiration was a combination of his travel experiences abroad and playing the famous online game FarmVille. 

Founded in 2010, Treedom is the only online platform in the world where you can have someone plant a tree for you and then follow it online. Today more than 2,000,000 trees have been planted in Africa, South America and Italy. All trees are planted directly by local farmers and bring environmental, social and financial benefits to their communities. Thanks to its business model, in 2014 Treedom became part of the Certified B Corporations, a network of companies that stand out for high environmental and social performance. Every tree on Treedom is geo-localized and photographed and has its online page, it can be kept or virtually gifted to others. 

By the end of this podcast, Federico shares its expansion plans in Asia. Thus giving an opportunity to collaborate and work with him.

More about Federico and Treedom:

Get in touch with Federico:

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We are living in exceptionally difficult times. Corona Pandemic, geopolitical polarization, the new inequality, climate change and many other wicked problems mark our times. To solve these issues we need a big solution. We need a systems changing solution. This podcast aims to inspire everyone to become a changemaker. In episode #0, MJ Tarun of Radio One very generously introduces me, Manthan Shah, the host, to the world. This podcast is an outcome of hard work of lots of changemakers and stakeholders. This episode marks the beginning of a journey.