Our Team

Founders

Neelambaree Prasad

Strategy, People & Partnerships

Kripa Iyer

Impact, Operations and Finance

Core Team

Daniel Jonusas

Research & Facilitation

Smriti Bhandari

Creatives and Design

Ileanor Horvath

SM and Project Management

Amy Shields

Branding

Juliet Toyson

Administration

Advisors

Alarmél Valli

Bharatanatyam dancer,
Choreographer

Sam Hunter Magee

Director of Creativity and Entrepreneurship, Harvard College

Nahid Siddiqui

Kathak dancer,
Choreographer

Ankur Garg

Country Director,
BBC Media Action

Jessica Fishman

Marketing and Communication,
Clean Energy

Hal Cazalet

Singer, Composer and Lyricist

Dinny

Ashoka Fellow,
Women’s rights activist

Experts

Dr. Eric Rignot

Glaciologist, UC, Irvine and NASA

Dr. Daanish Mustafa

Critical Geography,
Kings College London

Dr. Tina Heger

Biologist,
Co-Founder, Symbioscene

Prof. Naho Mirumachi

Environmental Politics,
King’s College London

Dr. Kerry Kriger

Conservationist,
Founder, Save the Frogs!

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Neelambaree Prasad

Strategy, People & Partnerships

Neelambaree is a versatile and inclusive leader who leverages diverse thinking in her teams. In her most recent role in Pharma, she led the post-acquisition, development, and integration of a USD 155 million portfolio across 70 countries. She also spearheaded the COVID response for this portfolio of emergency medicines, working closely with government bodies to prioritise public health. 

As an adept communicator, Neelambaree has collaborated effectively with scientists and business leaders. 

As a classical dancer, she has performed extensively in India and the UK and co-founded Madhuriya, an arts-based non-profit in the UK. She volunteers her time as a mentor at Aspire For Her to develop the careers of young women. A certified Terra.do Fellow (Climate Action program), Neelambaree’s understanding of intersectionality and the recognition of its potential, led her to launch ClimArts to begin changing the culture of climate storytelling.

Kripa Iyer

Impact, Operations and Finance

Kripa is an analytical thinker who has applied her training and skills as an Economist in various areas of public policy. She has led multi-functional teams to secure funding and deliver high profile government projects including the Covid 19 vaccination programme. She understands the importance of communicating technical concepts to a non-technical audience using accessible language to build consensus. She has experience managing relationships with senior stakeholders in government and has represented her organisations at cross-government forums.
She mentors younger Economists in the Civil Service and is experienced in establishing and growing new teams to strengthen analytical capabilities of organisations. She enjoys straddling the analytical and artistic world. A trained classical dancer, she has performed and taught dance in India, US and UK while pursuing her career in policy analysis. She continues to do this – building and growing ClimArts under her arts non-profit Madhuriya.

Daniel Jonusas

Research & Facilitation

Daniel is interested in what it means to take climate action: why is it easy for some, and not so important to others?

He first approached this question as a theatre-maker: in 2019, as a director and facilitator at The Greenhouse Theatre, the first zero-waste performance venue at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Looking deeper, he completed an MSc in Climate Change: Environment, Science & Policy at King’s College London, using his dissertation to design a viewer-response framework for cinema and television addressing climate change.

He is now a research associate with the UCL Climate Action Unit, helping to cultivate agency for climate action with clients across sector boundaries, from finance and journalism to local and national government.

ClimArts is the perfect place to continue this journey, combining the knowledge of the social sciences and the dynamism of the performing arts to enable the transformative action on which all our futures depend.

Smriti Bhandari

Creatives and Design

Smriti Bhandari, a passionate design student, is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Product Design at MIT Institute of Design, Pune. Throughout her studies, she has developed skills in research, product design, user-centred design, and visual communication while gaining hands-on experience with various design tools. With a strong understanding of design principles and techniques, she is dedicated to creating an impact through her work.

Smriti is a Kathak dancer who enjoys exploring new forms of artistic expression and is especially drawn to traditional forms of art. She believes in art being a powerful form of expression which allows individuals to communicate emotions and ideas that words cannot express alone. 

Ileanor Horvath

Social Media and Project Management

Ileanor Horvath, is a final year History student at King’s College London. Before and during her time at university, she has undertaken projects in research and climate initiatives. Inspired by her work in the early stages of the London Climate Change Festival, she co-founded Act for Climate, a non-profit seeking to change the way communities engage in local climate action. 

Seeking to pursue further studies in security and conflict resolution, she is keen to develop dialogue on the connection between conflict and climate. 

Ileanor’s longstanding passion for art and theatre have grounded her belief in the power of storytelling and art to share abstract thoughts, ideas and concepts. 

Amy Shields

Branding

Amy currently holds the position of Art Director, MTV UK.  She has been working in graphic design and branding for over 10 years and is also a fellow of the Terra.do LFA programme. She is a graduate of the Edinburgh College of Art. Amy has an advisory role guiding the branding of ClimArts.

Sam Hunter Magee

Director of Creativity and Entrepreneurship, Harvard College

Sam works to connect creativity, innovation, and social impact entrepreneurship communities. He is the Director on Creativity and Entrepreneurship for the Lemann Program on Creativity and Entrepreneurship at Harvard College. Previously, he was the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard University’s Operation Impact and an arts administrator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he founded an arts and entrepreneurship venture program. He co-founded Alchemy Unlimited, a consultancy that audits and supports innovation, community engagement, value-driven culture, and immersive storytelling. Sam earned an honorary doctorate from Univ Dominica Centrado in Foz do Iguazu, Brazil, and holds a patent for a hardware/software device that detects free fall and deploys an airbrake for drones. Sam is a member of several arts and entrepreneurship focused advisory boards. He is also a multi-media artist employing AR and AI to deepen his work which explores fantastical symbiotic systems with images and words.

Nahid Siddiqui

Kathak dancer,
Choreographer

Nahid Siddiqui, an exponent of Kathak dance, is acknowledged for contributing her own technique, and expression (Gharana), which is imbued and informed by Islamic and Sufi aesthetics and sensibilities.

She has performed in the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy, Morocco, and Jordan and has mesmerized international dignitaries like the Late Shah of Iran, Chancellor Schmidt of West Germany and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of Canada. Payal, a dynamic 13-episode visual encyclopedia, aired in Pakistan, her country of origin in 1978. It was a masterpiece but was banned by the military regime after its sixth episode was aired on TV. Nahid Siddiqui has since been symbolic of resistance against extremist ideologies, beautifully using her art to exemplify Islamic culture in a way not seen before. In England, where she lives, she inculcated the paradigms of Islamic geometry, Sufi poetry, Persian, Arab and Turkic influences in Kathak. She began her teaching career at the Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham. She launched her dance company and since then has continued to produce professional dancers, some of whom have gone on to launch their own companies.

A few awards amongst the many she has received are, British Cultural Award, Dance Umbrella Award and Lifetime Achievement Award (Lux Style Awards).

Ankur Garg

Country Director,
BBC Media Action

Ankur’s expertise lies at the cusp of social and behaviour change, partnerships, and climate change and its intersectional themes including gender, energy, food, and water. He’s worked with several organisations including UK’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) where he supported India’s first policy on solar rooftops and net metering solutions, launched India’s first carbon index on the Bombay Stock Exchange, and developed a range of measures to increase energy and fuel efficiency through policy and behavioural science interventions. 

He holds a MPhil in Technology Policy from the University of Cambridge where he was a Chevening Scholar and a Commonwealth Fellow. At BBC Media Action he’s been a key driver for the innovative communications agenda, including helping bring Clean India Mission onto the international agenda, supporting the thinking around impact investments for communication interventions, creating the organisation’s first climate governance action portfolio in Indonesia including creating media market shifts on the subject, and bringing machine learning to strengthen our immersion and segmentation approaches for digital communication strategies. He currently serves as BBC Media Action’s Country Director in India and on the global leadership team.

Jessica Fishman

Marketing and Communication,
Clean Energy

With nearly 20 years of progressive expertise, a decade of which is in renewable energy, Jessica Fishman is a clean energy marketing and communications expert passionate about fighting climate collapse. Focused on making complex energy topics relatable and engaging, she believes that storytelling makes for the best marketing.

Her experience in clean energy includes a wide-range of technologies, including solar inverters, PV panels, racking, EV charging and powertrains, UPS, VPPs, batteries and other DERs, energy monitoring and control platforms, PV design software, and SCADA hardware. Additionally, she has experience in the different solar energy segments and global markets.

During her career, Jessica has worked for market-leading clean energy companies, building up both a marketing and public relations department. She successfully created and built a global media relations department that was responsible for establishing the company as a thought leader as it grew from a start-up to a multi-billion-dollar clean energy company, the largest in the industry, which included an IPO and three acquisitions.

As a storyteller at heart, Jessica is also a published author and she holds a B.A. in Journalism and an M.B.A.

Hal Cazalet

Singer, Composer and Lyricist

As a Singer, Composer and lyricist, Hal is a keen advocate of new works which seek to converge multiple art forms into a more singular and immersive style of theatre. He studied at The Guildhall School of Music in London, and at The Juilliard School in New York where he won the Shoshana Foundation Award.

Hal has performed in most of the world’s main opera houses, creating leading roles for new theatrical works, including Nicholas in Tod Machover’s Pulitzer Prize Finalist Death and the Powers (Monte Carlo Opera, Boston’s Majestic Theatre, Chicago Opera, The Dallas Opera), Gerard in Philip Glass’s Les Enfants Terribles (BAM Opera House, USA and European Tours), Charles in Roxanna Panufnik’s The Music Program (Polish National Opera, Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House). Hal has performed in concert at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Centre, The Wigmore Hall, The Santa Fe Opera and at the Kennedy Centre (DC) with Christopher Hogwood and the NSO. Appearances on BBC Radio & Television include: A Portrait of Wodehouse, Loose Ends, In Tune, Elaine Paige on Sunday, BBC Proms.

For The London Climate Change Festival, Hal wrote the title song performed by Danielle De Niese & the ENO Orchestra for the Song For Nature concert broadcast on Sky Arts from London’s Coliseum on World Earth Day.

Dr. Eric Rignot

Glaciologist, UC, Irvine and NASA

Professor Rignot is a world-renowned glaciologist who studies the effects of global climate change on polar ice sheets. He uses satellites, airborne sensors, field data and numerical models to understand the dynamics of glacier ice along the coasts of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets as well as in Alaska and Patagonia. His research has documented major acceleration of ice loss as a result of climate change, and has been widely covered by The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, BBC, CNN, National Geographic and many others. 

Dr. Rignot was featured in the Emmy-winning HBO series VICE where he discussed his findings of Antarctica’s melting ice sheets and the global impact of sea level rise. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and recipient of the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal. In 2014, he was named among the world’s most influential researchers in the list of Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researchers. Professor Rignot is part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. 

In addition to his appointment at UCI, he is a Senior Research Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) where he leads several NASA-funded projects. 

Dr. Daanish Mustafa

Critical Geography,
Kings College London

Dr Daanish Mustafa obtained his BA in Geography from Middlebury College, USA, his MA from University of Hawai’i Manoa, and his PhD in Geography from University of Colorado.

Daanish was the co-author of the first climate change response strategies for Pakistan, in addition to being the lead author for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Pakistan five-year flood response strategy.

In addition, he has also undertaken policy-related work with the DfID, International Organization for Migration (IOM), Stimson Centre, and United States Institute for Peace (USIP).

Daanish’s research interests have been in water resources geography, environmental hazards, development and critical geographies of violence and terror.

Dr. Tina Heger

Biologist,
Co-Founder, Symbioscene

Dr. Tina Heger is a biologist who specialises in invasive species and their impact on native ecosystems. She holds a PhD from the Technical University of Munich, and did her postdoctoral research at the University of California, Davis. At the University of Potsdam, Germany she researched novel ecosystems and the effect of ecological novelty on organisms (Bridging in Biodiversity Science). 
She is currently engaged in cross-disciplinary research including philosophers and political scientists concerning meaningful aims of nature conservation in face of biological invasions and ecological novelty. Since 2021, she has been co-leading two research projects at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) in Berlin, working with computer scientists to develop new ways of providing knowledge about biological invasions to create a digital “atlas of knowledge” in which scientific knowledge would be accessible in an understandable form at no cost. Dr. Heger is co-founder of Symbio(s)cene e.V., an NGO that aims to develop positive visions for a livable future beyond the Anthropocene by bringing science and art together (symbioscene.com). 

Prof. Naho Mirumachi

Environmental Politics,
King’s College London

Prof. Naho Mirumachi is Professor of Environmental Politics at the Department of Geography, King’s College London, UK. She leads the King’s Water Centre that works to incubate, elevate, and empower the best science and innovation to tackle the world’s water problems. 

Her research tries to understand the socio-political barriers to water sustainability, examined through the interconnections of water, food, energy and climate. 

Naho is the author of three books (Water: A Critical Introduction, Wiley, 2023; Water Conflicts: Analysis for Transformation, Oxford University Press, 2020; Transboundary Water Politics in the Developing World, Routledge 2015) and has produced reports for UN

Environment, IPCC and the European Parliament.

Dr. Kerry Kriger

Conservationist,
Founder, Save the Frogs!

Dr. Kerry Kriger is the Founder & Executive Director of SAVE THE FROGS!, the world’s leading amphibian conservation organization. He conceived Save The Frogs Day, the world’s largest day of amphibian education and conservation action, and has given over 450 presentations on amphibian conservation in 20+ countries. Dr. Kriger holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from Griffith University in Gold Coast, Australia, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA. He is a recognized expert on the amphibian disease chytridiomycosis, a topic on which he has published 20 articles in peer-reviewed international scientific journals. 

Dr. Kriger’s amphibian conservation efforts have been supported by the National Geographic Society, the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund, Patagonia, and various philanthropic organizations throughout the world. Dr. Kriger is also the Founder of Nonprofit ICU, through which he provides consulting and mentorship to nonprofit executives.