Tech Team Members

Sudha Padmanabha - Senior CDM Specialist

Sudha has a doctorate in Botany from Bangalore University. She worked as a Research Associate for 11 years at Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in Forest Management, Forestry Mitigation Studies, Biomass Studies, GHG Inventory of Land Use Change and Forestry Sector.

From 2005 to 2009, she headed the CDM activities of a French Renewable Energy Company and was involved in writing PDDs, Validation, Registration, Monitoring and Verification of Biomass and Hydro Projects for the company in India and Brazil.

For the past 16 years, long before the Fair Climate Network was formed, Sudha worked closely with ADATS to develop pro-poor projects that tapped carbon resources for the sustainable development of the poor.

Pradeep Esteves - NGO Dynamics

After working for 20 years at ADATS, Bagepalli, Pradeep started consulting other NGOs in India and abroad on Organisational Development, Finance and CBOs. He has offered long term process accompaniment to many grassroots organisations.

Pradeep is one of the founding members of the Fair Climate Network and, for the past 6 years, has contributed heavily to handholding and facilitating FCN Members take the plunge to develop pro-poor CDM projects. With an expansion of workload, he decided to join the Tech Team full time and take responsibility for the NGO dynamics aspects of CDM development.

Rakesh Tiwari - LCF Specialist

A botanist by background with interest in rural ecosystem dynamics and community livelihoods. Worked as a Project Associate since 2006 with the Centre for Sustainable Technologies, Indian Institute of Science after a Masters in applied botany from the Kuvempu University, Shivamogga. Research areas include natural resource management, village ecosystems, ecosystem services and tradeoffs, forest ecosystem and impacts of climate change; vulnerability of landscapes and production systems to climate change.

Vivy Jacob Thomas - Finance Manager

Vivy has worked in the development sector for the past 32 years. He started this career in 1982 with ADATS, Bagepalli, where he worked for 23 years. His last held position was as Finance Director.

Since then, worked with Context India, in their Hybrid Auto rickshaw Project to improve the social conditions of the auto drivers while at the same time to improve the environmental aspects. He was also involved in developing a tool for measuring Social Return on investment (SROI).

Chethan T.R - CDM Facilitator

Chethan T.R did his BE in Instrumentation Technology from Dr. Ambedkar Institute of Technology, Bangalore. He started working in ICICI Bank as an Accounts officer and later joined Tata Communications as a Network Engineer. Also worked as a lecturer in the Electronics department of the APS College of Engineering and in the Govt. Polytechnique College, Bagepalli as a part time lecturer.

Tara Sriram - LCF Facilitator

Tara Sriram did her B.E in Biotechnology from M.S.R.I.T, Bangalore. She has always been a keen environmentalist with a particular interest in wildlife and climate change and when the opportunity arose to work for FCN, decided to make the career switch, working on the Low Carbon Farming project.

Drishya Nair - LCF Specialist

Drishya obtained her Bachelor's degree in Botany Honors from the University of Delhi and thereafter she did her Masters in Climate Science and Policy from TERI University, New Delhi. She has internship experiences at The Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and Freie University, Berlin as an exchange student with DAAD Scholarship. She worked at The Energy and Resources Institute as a Project Consultant on various projects related to climate change adaptation. Her areas of interest include Ecosystem dynamics and climate change, REDD-plus, Climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation. She considers the FCN-LCF as a platform to gain practical knowledge and experience in the area of climate change and agriculture.

Mohsin Khan - Projects Manager

Mohsin Khan has a master degree in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. In TISS he specialized in Community Organization and Development Studies. Before that he did IT engineering from a private engineering college accredited by Mumbai University. For two years he worked in Seva Mandir, Udaipur, in Natural Resource Department on various forestry related programs/projects but had a main responsibility of overseeing an action research project on the status of common lands in five states of the country. As Projects Manager, he will monitor the investment interests of FCN in various Client projects.

Gita Peters - Projects Manager

Gita Peters completed her Masters in Social Work from TISS, Mumbai with specialization in Community Organisation and Development Practice & Rural Development, Environment and Sustainable Livelihoods. She is also a trained veterinarian and graduated from Kerala Agricultural University in BVsc & AH. Following post graduation, she joined the Rural Development Department of the Government of Gujarat and served for two and a half years as Assistant Project Manager in the State team of GLPC and was involved in the implementation of National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) and other Central and State sponsored Rural Development Programmes in Gujarat. She believes in the importance of Community organisation and looks into NGO dynamics aspects at FCN.