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Dekila Chungyalpa

Director at The University of Wisconsin-Madison

About me

Dekila is the founder and director of the Loka Initiative. She is an accomplished environmental program director, with more than 20 years of experience designing and implementing conservation projects. Dekila has created faith-led environmental and climate partnerships all around the world, designed and managed biodiversity landscape and freshwater conservation strategies, and is deeply invested in community-based solutions. She began her career in 2001 working for the World Wildlife Fund in the Eastern Himalayas and the Mekong region. In 2008, she helped establish Khoryug, an association of over 50 Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and nunneries implementing environmental projects across the Himalayas under the auspices of His Holiness the Karmapa. In 2009, Dekila founded and led WWF Sacred Earth, which built conservation partnerships with faith leaders and religious institutions in East Africa, the Amazon, the Himalayas, the Mekong, and the United States. She received the Yale McCluskey Award in 2014 and moved to the Yale School of Environmental Studies, where she designed the prototype for the Loka Initiative. Dekila is originally from the Himalayan state of Sikkim in northeast India and is of Bhutia origin.