Email - shehzia@climate-talent.org

Work - founder, CSIDC. I teach and write about how individuals and movements can enable people to respond to complex, uncertain and high-stake situations.

Other identities - meditator, mom, singer, poet, partner, friend.

Although I won’t be there in person for the retreat, I can already feel the entangled energy and my best wishes. I’m deeply willing to co-hold and co-weave the future with all of you.

whatsapp: +44 7895885572

wechat:fayelu

email:faye.mingyi@gmail.com

linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/faye-mingyi-lu/

serial entrepreneur/curator

intercontinental

wilderness sports

Thai/US citizen

I then moved to Beijing to set up Greenpeace in China, and went on to lead various green NGOs large and small, international and domestic, including WWF, Friends of Nature, and Greenovation Hub which I founded. I also founded a boutique non-profit for facilitation and activists education - Forward Works - with my partner in crime, Apple Chan.

So this gathering in Sabah, Borneo feels like a double full circle for me. I am really excited and grateful for this double loop journey.

Two weeks ago, with a group of regenerative practitioners from around Asia, our feet got sucked into the rice paddy fields, and we collected snails that got fed to ducks!

Snails are symbols of laziness and ignorance in the Buddhist context so you can say we were being disciplined in self development. However, snails are also wonderful reminders to go slow and gentle, to be vulnerable and soft, and always carry the spiral home with us :)

That’s how I feel the two sides of me, I’m both trying to enjoy our beautiful adventure of life slowly, while trying to catch myself in various ways that I can do better!

I'm happy to be a coach and facilitator, which is so different from the past (and almost forgotten) chapters of my life - technologist, researcher, consultant.

The direct and simple way has always made sense to me (it helps that my name means "straightforward" in Sanskrit) so I'm an advocate of this approach.

I would call myself a seeker of balance, integration, variety and humour (see photo - the expression is not uncommon :)). I seem to find them in yoga and the arts, and would love to bring them more into coaching and facilitation so that they are as playful as serious.

Looking forward to spending time with all of you!

Injustice makes me angry. And compassion makes my heart swell. I do what i do in part because of these.

I love where I work because we strive to honor people's agency and leadership and talent in fighting for climate justice. I've deeply enjoyed learning about Sabah through this work.

Mindfulness practice - prayer, sitting meditation, a lot of journaling. It's always found me even if I'm in and out of awareness. I enjoyed reading your intros and love the references - I've also turned to Tara Brach for a saving grace and once joined a local Plum Village sangha. Anyone in the group practicing qi gong? Or maybe an occasional examen? :)

I therefore have a complicated relationship with coloniality and nationalism. I actually went to graduate school and wrote about the inevitable predicament and banal experience of decolonizing ourselves.

During my two decades of service in international (read Western) environmental organizations (which themselves need to be decolonized), I increasingly recognize and appreciate the duo challenge of overcoming our own countries’ growth-led developmentalism as well as the limitation of western / euro-centric environmentalism. Just to spell out, for instance, the decarbonization of economy is much more complicated in the global south as governments need to develop to left people from poverty while decarbonize- while developed economies have the “luxury” of decarbonize while they are industrializing after centuries of resources and wealth extraction from the South.

It was a very long, and circular, journey for me to finally find my own voice and feel at ease with the situation we, as global south environmentalists, found ourselves entangled in. As someone very wise once said, people make history - but people do not make history in vacuum - people make history within the conditions and limitations they inherited from their processors.

On this - both programmatically and epistemologically - I believe and advocate for an Asian decade of shifting attention of the international climate movement towards Asia where the majority of the problem, as well as the potential of and momentum for solutions at scale could be found.

Asia emits more than half of the world’s carbon emissions but we are getting less than 20% of the international climate philanthropy resources to address the challenges. While as 80% of the resources go to economies that now composed of 20% of the emission.

The Asia Decade calls for not only rightsizing the recourses needed to fundamentally address the challenges of poly crisis in the region where it really matter maters, more importantly, it invites all of us change makers from Asia to inherit, break free, overcome (Aufheben), and go beyond the eurocentrism of universalizing western perspectives and methodologies and treating Asia as an object - an object to apply knowledge and analysis, to police and to manage. Asia itself should be a methodology for us to imagine a new world - from the ruins of the old one with 500 years and more of colonialization of our land, people and mind.

My parents identities were largely shaped by repeated migrations, colonial structures, identity politics, rascism, poverty, hardship from broken family structures and violence. And yet, the qualities of the feminine is deeply entrenched in both sides of my ancestry which values care, the relational and interconnection between humanity. And spirituality and multiple faiths have informed and guided my journey of life.

I was one of the first in my family to participate in tertiary education. And I have been led to live in multiple communities around the world including Asia, wearing different hats and changing constantly.

At the centre of who I am is my beautiful family of my husband and 3 boys who center who I in every moment of life

I experience wholeness in spaces that invite the relational self through the heart, head, body, spirituality , ancestry and deeply connect and interconnects with the whole self, each other, communities, nature and the broader system. I love whole ecosystem developments and in particular weaving and (interconnecting) between people, communities, nature and systems. And a space where everyone is invited to the table to create a shared sense of belonging .

• Connect deeply into the self through integral coaching modalities, retreats including spiritual retreats, coaching circles and more

• Develop intentional learning agendas and evidence that shifts power in philanthropy to empower everyone.

• Actively advice families and wealth holders in the global Majority to develop intentional people and community centric. funding interventions for whole ecosystem resilience, systems change, power shifts in the global majority

I firmly work in networks and collaboratives in the global Majority from Latin America, Africa and Asia

Work: I studied fine arts and then Graphic design just when computers were coming online and managed to surf the wave of web and interactive design working in agencies and eventually balancing out the commercial work with "doing good" by Greenpeace freelancing and then working with the international office full time. I joined Greenpeace Southeast Asia with my creative hat on, but soon found the problem solving aspect of design (the bit that i really love) could be utilised in other ways. It's especially handy when facilitating, there's always problems to be solved & that's where i get my energy from :) Currently answering to engagement director and interim programme co-director

A little about me: I'm deeply curious about people and society and what drives or influences the way we make decisions and meaning. Through this, I have found my sense of meaning in work and in community – both professionally and personally – and I like to measure my progress by how much I'm able to learn and unlearn and relearn everyday. I find balance somewhere between critical thinking and compassion and I admire those who can bring both adaptiveness and playfulness into their worldview. 

In terms of work, I care about listening and sense-making, both as an individual and in the collective, and how this can lead to consensus building and meaningful action towards shared objectives. I'm convinced that there is always some alignment point, and the pursuit of this is what drives me and excites me. 

Find me on:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/varunmukerji/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/varunmukerji/

Whatsapp: +919890259677

• Active Hope

• Theory U

• Trauma informed interventions

• Co-creative / collaborative actions