Meet The Core Team


Prabha Upreti
Prabha is an economist by profession, currently pursuing MBA at University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She had multiple years of work experience at a New Growth Solutions Analyst at AES Corporation. She is currently working on a simple, digital customer solution to improve accessibility to clean energy, energy financing and other energy programs. She graduated from Princeton University in 2020 where she studied Ecnonomics and Finance. Prabha is a lifelong learner and is passionate about developing sustainable and scalable solutions to complex problems. Outside of work, you can find her painting or reading. She also loves cooking, traveling, meeting new people and having conversations with the friends she has made along her journey about anything and everything. Her vision for Aakar is to create a channel to cultivate young, empowered leaders who create solutions and make a difference.
Chhiring Lama
Chhiring is a Biostatistics PhD fellow at Columbia University. Prior to graduate school, she worked in cancer research as research technician where she utilized high performance computing techniques and analyzed genomic data to answer crucial biological questions pertaining to blood cancer biology. She graduated from Smith College in 2021 with a degree in Biochemistry and Data Science. Her interest lies in clinical and population health research. She feels privileged to have studied in institutions that provided her with the opportunities to participate in student clubs and organize community outreach programs. She shares that these experiences played an important role in shaping her interest in non-profit works. With this project, she hopes to cultivate a 'giving back' mindset in youths and work with them to bring about more open-minded and equitable changes in communities within Nepal.
Kussum Ghimire
This is Kussum, a student of Biology with keen interests in interventions and developments in the field of science and education. Being involved in social awareness and educational development works for the past 3 years, I have been working towards educating myself and facilitating other young people in varied social matters and areas. The experiences have made me more compassionate, thoughtful, flexible and motivated. I’d like to identify as a soul with varied interests ranging from reading classic literature to singing acapella and making tons of DIYs at home. I like to support and get involved with projects, usually voluntarily, that align with my vision and concerns. These involvements have made me humbler, enthusiastic and eager to learn and educate myself with correct information and new skills. I am thrilled to be a part of Aakar Nepal as a Local Program Coordinator and support their program in Nepal. The knowledge, skills, experiences and perspectives I’ve accumulated in my journey till now and still further is what I wish to contribute in my tenure in the project. I am equally ecstatic to work with the team to help facilitate young minds grow, learn, create and advance towards their goals.