Mamta Borgoyari is a development professional and trained economist who is seeking those answers from the mountains where she holds retreats and gathers her courage and resilience to care for others. She has found the feminine energy in nature that must be mirrored in our lives and our workplaces in order to accept vulnerability, compassion and nurturing that then will be turned into action, resilience and courage, reflective of our own natural surroundings.
Mamta currently serves as the Executive Director of She Changes Climate, an organization committed to promoting gender parity and women's leadership in climate action and policy. Through justice work, Mamta is dedicated to amplifying the voices of women and indigenous communities from the Global South and integrating them in climate negotiations and decision making.
Executives in the Wild Hosts Jessica Smith and Diana Denke learned in this podcast episode more about Mamta’s belief in the power of holistic leadership and mentoring that guides her work toward creating a more equitable and just world.
Nature led Mamta’s journey to self discovery and the realization that learning from Nature to create environments is essential to innovation, resilience and growth, both personally and to invent holistic organizations.
Mamta moved from research to field work and spent the next 19 years at the grassroots level working with women and children in marginalized areas, in remote areas, in climate vulnerable areas. She saw the similarities between women and nature, the inherent capacity to nurture and the same power and resilience to crisis. Last year, after 27 years working in very sensitive and painful situations such as human trafficking and child abuse, Mamta took a break to think and reflect, to go into nature and bring back her lessons to climate justice work.
She found grounding and roots in the Himalayas, where she also explored how Indigenous Peoples relate to the mountain spirit. Being with nature, she surmised, reveals the true self.
“You cannot hide yourself. You cannot put on a fake image,” she said of being in the quiet setting of mountains and listening to the natural world around her.
On a three-day trek with her team of 40 into the mountains, she found in the quiet of the night, nature revealed to her the strengths and the weaknesses of her team members.
“I saw who should be placed where. Who should be leading what. What are their weaknesses. What are their strengths. And most importantly, what, as a leader, is my inner strength and what are my weaknesses? I think that what I draw inspiration from and what I feel the world needs today is what Mother Nature is inherent in nature, which is nurture, which is compassion, which is care, which is love, which is resilience, which is strength. Leadership today, at every level, from politics to the ground level, requires feminine, nature-driven, skills.”
Mamta talks about the imperative of reflecting the attributes of Mother Nature in all aspects of the world.
Join Diana, Jessica and Mamta as they take a journey into the feminine aspects of Nature that can benefit back to our societies today.
About Mamta
Throughout her career, Mamta has championed the rights of marginalized women and children. Her achievements include integrating over 800 school dropout children back into the education system, rescuing more than 12,000 children from human trafficking, child sexual abuse and exploitation. Her work focuses on ensuring access to education, sustainable livelihoods and human rights, particularly in the Global South. She has been building the capacities of over 20,000 government stakeholders to provide services efficiently and compassionately.
She has also facilitated more than 5000 women in climate vulnerable areas in India to run their own small scale businesses, and provided professional training to over 300 women farmers collectives. She is recognized for her expertise and accomplishments, having been honored by Women Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the top ten Women Leaders of 2013, in India. She is an alumni of the prestigious International Visiting Leaders Program of the US government, and is currently serving as a member of the Advisory Council of the daughters of the Earth and an Ambassador of the Women's Climate Collective cohort of Fondation L'Oreal.
