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Vishal Talreja

Cofounder and Trustee, Dream a Dream; Cofounder, The Cocoon Initiative

Vishal is an Educator and Social Entrepreneur. He co-founded Dream a Dream (www.dreamadream.org) along with 11 others. Dream a Dream a Dream is a registered, charitable trust empowering children and young people from vulnerable backgrounds to overcome adversity and flourish in the 21st century using a creative life skills approach. In 2023, Vishal also founded a new initiative called The Cocoon Initiative designed to support civil society leaders in India to take a sabbatical. Vishal has co-authored 4-research papers with Dr David Pearson and Dr. Fiona Kennedy related to Life Skills in the Indian context and has written a host of articles, white papers, policy briefs related to Education Transformation. He has also co-authored a book, ‘When We Thrive, Our World Thrives’ along with Dr Connie K Chung and Dream a Dream staff and participants. He has also published a book of poems called, ‘My Soul Stirring’. Vishal is an Ashoka Fellow (www.ashoka.org), an Eisenhower Fellow (https://www.efworld.org/) and a Salzburg Global Fellow (https://www.salzburgglobal.org/). He is a Board Member at Goonj (https://goonj.org/). Previously been the Founder Director of Unltd India and Board Member of PYE Global (www.pyeglobal.org) and India Cares Foundation (https://www.icfn.in/). He is the Executive Committee Member of Karanga – The Global Alliance on Life Skills and SEL (https://karanga.org/) and Cofounder of The Weaving Lab (https://weavinglab.org/). Vishal has been recognized as an “Architect of the Future” by the Waldzell Institut in Austria and as ‘Innovator of the Year’ in 2019 by HundrED. He also mentors and advises a host of emerging social entrepreneurs and changemakers while contributing to global education narratives through participation in various steering committees and working groups with the likes of WISE, G20, Catalyst 2030, Big Change and OECD.

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Jean Bosco Niyonzima

Co-founder & Executive Director, Ubuntu Center for Peace

Dr. Jean Bosco Niyonzima is a Rwandan medical doctor, social entrepreneur, and expert in trauma healing and community-based mental health. He holds a Doctor of Medicine (MD) from the National University of Rwanda, a Master of Public Health from the University of Liverpool, a Master of Arts in Sustainable Development, and a diploma in the Psychosocial Foundations of Peacebuilding from SIT Graduate Institute, Vermont, USA. With over 12 years of leadership and management experience in international development and humanitarian settings, Dr. Niyonzima has worked across seven African countries and the UK with organizations such as Save the Children International, International Medical Corps, Last Mile Health, and Partners In Health. His expertise spans health systems strengthening, psychosocial healing, mental health, and public health innovation in complex settings, with a focus on sustainable, community-driven solutions. As the co-founder and Executive Director of the Ubuntu Center for Peace, Dr. Niyonzima is pioneering a community-based social healing model to address collective trauma and common mental health conditions. His approach integrates breath-centered mind-body practices, collective narrative therapy, and local rituals, fostering deep healing and resilience. Implemented in Rwanda and expanding to humanitarian contexts, this model is designed for scalability and sustainability, empowering communities to reclaim their well-being. Dr. Niyonzima is passionate about advancing Ubuntu-driven healing solutions globally, bridging science, indigenous wisdom, and human connection to transform trauma into collective growth.

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Jonathan Rose

Director of Masterplanning, Prior + Partners

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About Jonathan Rose

Jonathan Rose RIBA As an architect and Director of Masterplanning at Prior + Partners in London, Jonathan is privileged to offer a keynote to the Hearth Summit, addressing the challenges of rapid urbanisation in a Himalayan context. Showcasing work together with the Royal Govt of Bhutan, the Thimphu Structure Plan puts wellbeing and ecological belonging at the core of the capital city’s framework for the future. Developed as Bhutan’s vision for Gross National Happiness turns 50 and a rising, younger generation looks to define a meaningful future within and beyond Bhutan, the TSP establishes a framework for action for all involved. Balancing the need for protection with a focus on ‘good growth in the right places’, the TSP aims to integrate GNH within the boundaries of Doughnut Economics.

What does the city offer its citizens as a place of continuity and care, innovation and opportunity? In his work at city scale, Jonathan combines an inter-disciplinary, multi-practice approach to creating successful urban places, resolving complex challenges from the deeply held view that social and environmental wellbeing lie at the heart of long term value creation and holistic, sustainable development. Current work in UK includes city centre regeneration at Smithfield in Birmingham, and London’s most significant scale, community-based masterplan at Thamesmead Waterfront, weaving together nature with riverfront living for Peabody Trust. Jonathan has made a career-long dedication to work in the Himalayan region, as Design Director of the Druk Padma Karpo School in Ladakh in Northern India and as a Trustee of Drukpa Trust. His work in the leadership of the TSP team was honoured by His Majesty through the award of Druk Thuksey, or ‘heart-son’ of Bhutan.

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Srinija Srinivasan

Co-founder, Loove; Co-founder, Jubilee College

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About Srinija Srinivasan

An abiding curiosity about human consciousness has guided Srinija Srinivasan throughout her life. Born in India and raised in Lawrence, Kansas, the contrast in her bicultural upbringing caused Srinija to wonder from a young age what possibilities can arise from believing spirit is in ourselves and all around us. This manifested in a love of the arts and fascination with aspects of lived reality beyond materialism. She followed her siblings to college in California, and having studied artificial intelligence at Stanford, she began working at the Cyc Project, a large-scale AI effort to build an immense database of commonsense knowledge.

In 1995, she joined Yahoo! as their fifth employee and self-titled Ontological Yahoo. Over the next 15 years, she served as Yahoo!’s Vice President, Editor-in-Chief, embedded deeply in a rapidly evolving tech industry while her work centered on the human experience, from directing the categorization system of the Yahoo! Directory to leadership over editorial and policy issues globally. During that time she also chaired the board of non-profit SFJAZZ, and these experiences together led her to co-found Loove, a music venture in Brooklyn, NY exploring how commerce and technology can be guided by artistic values rather than letting our culture be led by market values.

She is also a cofounder of Jubilee College, an immersive two-year school under development in Dunsmuir, CA where students will be equally rooted in physical work, rigorous liberal arts study, and contemplative practice towards cultivating intuition, humility and compassion, so they may imagine and create a future conducive to thriving life on Earth. Srinija is a board member of the On Being Project and a former vice chair of Stanford University’s Board of Trustees. She lives in Palo Alto, CA and Brooklyn, NY.

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HE Imam Yahya Hendi

Director of Muslim Life, Georgetown University

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About HE Imam Yahya Hendi

Imam Yahya Hendi is the Director for Muslim Life. He has been at Georgetown for 25 years and was the first Muslim chaplain to be hired full-time by an American university. Imam Hendi is a Public Policy Conflict Resolution Fellow at the Center for Dispute Resolution at the University of Maryland School of Law and the Maryland Judiciary’s Mediation and Conflict Resolution Office. Imam Hendi is the founder and the president of Clergy Beyond Borders. He also serves as a member of the Islamic Jurisprudence Council of North America. Imam has served as an adjunct faculty member for Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Science and Osher’s Lifelong Learning Institute of John Hopkins University, Fordham University, and Hartford Seminary. Imam Hendi also taught the course Inter-religious Encounters at Georgetown University. He is passionate about environmental responsibility, racial justice, eliminating poverty, fighting against the growing sense of militarism, and empowering Muslims to reform the way they practice and understand Islam.

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Professor Marco Casagrande

Architect Professor, Casagrande Laboratory Finland, O.M. Beketov National University of Urban Economy in Kharkiv, Ukraine

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About Professor Marco Casagrande

Marco Casagrande (1971) is a Finnish architect, biourbanist, social theorist, and professor of architecture. He is the laureate of the UNESCO Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, European Prize for Architecture, International Committee of Architecture Critics CICA Award, Lorenzo Il Magnifico Award, Red Dot Design Award, World Architecture Community Award, Sustainable Build Innovator Award, among other nominations. His works have been exhibited 6 times in the Venice Architecture Biennale and dozens of other exhibitions worldwide. Casagrande has been teaching and researching in 65 academic institutions in 25 countries, holding professorships at the Tamkang University in Taiwan, Bergen School of Architecture in Norway, and O.M. Beketov National University of Urban Economy and King Danylo universities in Ukraine. Known to operate on demanding situations among un-official settlements, emerging urbanisms, and environmental challenges. Theatres of operation include Pakistan, India, Qatar, Jordan, China, Japan, Taiwan, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Argentina, Alaska, Canada, Italy, UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Russia, Croatia, Serbia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Norway, Denmark, Finland.

100 realized works in 20 different countries. Casagrande views cities as complex energy organisms in which different overlapping layers of energy flows are determining the actions of the citizens as well as the development of the city. By mixing environmentalism and urban design, Casagrande is developing methods of Urban Acupuncture to create ecologically sustainable urban development towards the so-called Third Generation City. Development cooperation with UNFPA and Save Ukraine Fund for Skin-to-Skin Architecture with psychologically calming and restorative maternity and child-health polyclinics, gender based violence shelters, war orphan rehabilitation centers and foster home villages for returnee children from Russian captivity. Marco is Vice President of International Society of Biourbanism and Principal of the Casagrande Laboratory, internationally operating architecture, biourbanism, and innovation office based in Helsinki, Finland. “There is no other reality than nature.”

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Dr. May East

Director, May East Consulting Limited

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About Dr. May East

May East is an international urbanist specialised in nature-positive and gender-sensitive cities. A UNITAR Fellow, her current work involves the use of regenerative design approaches for shaping 20-minutes neighbourhoods, mining cities and informal settlements. She holds a Master of Science in Spatial Planning with specialization in the rehabilitation of abandoned villages and a PhD in Architecture and Urban Planning on the topic What if Women Designed the City? She was a co-founder of Gaia Education and led the organisation for over a decade. Currently, she serves as the UN House Scotland Director of Cities programme. May was awarded Women of the Decade in Sustainability and Leadership by Women Economic Forum in 2019.

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Pedro Portela

Robust Strategy

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About Pedro Portela

Pedro Portela (he/him) is a facilitator, systems thinker, and former aerospace engineer working at the intersection of governance, complexity, and collective wellbeing. Based in Porto, Portugal, Pedro brings an unusual mix of technical precision and social intuition to his work — helping organizations, networks, and communities navigate how they live and work together in uncertain times. Pedro began his career in the space industry, co-founding and running an aerospace engineering company focused on European Space Agency projects.

Over the years, his fascination with systems expanded beyond machines and missions to include human systems — how we organize, decide, belong, and make meaning together. This shift led him to the world of peacebuilding, where he now works as a consultant and facilitator with funders, grassroots networks, and communities around the world. A core thread in Pedro’s work is governance — not as a set of rules or organizational charts, but as a living practice that shapes how we relate. He believes governance lives in the everyday: in how we listen, disagree, hold power, and take care of each other. He is especially interested in governance under pressure, and draws inspiration from resilience engineering, cognitive systems theory, and the lived experience of networks navigating complexity.

Pedro currently supports Humanity United’s peacebuilding portfolio and co-stewards an international community of practice exploring governance as a field of care and possibility. He regularly teaches and facilitates on leadership, followership, and systems thinking at business schools, R&D institutions, and within civil society. He is also developing the EDGE Framework — a consulting approach inspired by the principles of graceful extensibility, aimed at helping organizations adapt and thrive in dynamic environments. When he’s not working, Pedro can often be found flying — either virtually in a flight simulator or in real life as a student pilot. His love of aviation continues to shape how he sees systems, risk, and learning. Pedro’s work is guided by a deep belief that how we organize ourselves — especially in the in-between moments — holds the key to the future we long for.

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Claude Gatebuke

Executive Director, African Great Lakes Action Network (AGLAN) 

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About Claude Gatebuke

Claude focuses on highlighting and sharing stories of marginalized/neglected communities that are left out of the usual narratives. Such stories transform difficult and traumatic journeys from pain to empowerment. He is passionate about human rights and justice as components of individual and community wellbeing. He uses public platforms as ways to promote restorative justice. He is also passionate about mental health, wellbeing, and storytelling as a ways to promote human rights. He leads the African Great Lakes Action Network (AGLAN).

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Kendall Bryant

Research & Program Associate, The Red House at Georgetown University

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About Kendall Bryant

Kendall (they/them) is a Research and Writing Associate at the Red House with a B.S. in Business Management and a minor in African-American Studies. A current Master’s student in Engaged & Public Humanities at Georgetown, they seek to use culture, dialogue, and research to create spaces for sharing power and rooting deeply into visions of healing where technology, education, art, and justice meet.

Additionally, Kendall is an independent, self-produced musician and songwriter who uses their craft to meditate on the ethics of love while lifting up the work of mutual aid organizations and community gardens/farms in Washington, D.C. They seek to honor the legacies of the extraordinary people who have fed their unquenchable belief in a better world by using their extensive skills and abundant curiosity to investigate ways of knowing, doing, and being together that may support meaningful, sustainable social change and projects of liberation worldwide.