‍[00:02] Jennifer Wu: Hi everyone, thanks for listening to The Founder Spirit podcast. I'm your host, Jennifer Wu. In this podcast series, I interview exceptional individuals from all over the world with the founder spirit, ranging from social entrepreneurs, tech founders, to philanthropists, elite athletes, and more. Together, we'll uncover not only how they manage to succeed in face of multiple challenges, but also who they are as people and their human story.

The following episode was recorded during the 2024 Villars Summit held by the Villars Institute, where I recorded several short interviews over a period of 3 days. The Founder Spirit Podcast is proud to be a partner of the Villars Institute, a nonprofit foundation focused on accelerating the transition to a net-zero economy and restoring planetary health.

“I saw my first tiger and leopard by the time I was two, I was tracking tigers when I was eight, I was learning to set up camera traps. But I also saw very closely the conservation challenges of trying to support people while trying to protect wildlife in India.”

“When you run an organization that has a remarkable legacy, I think there's a responsibility to celebrate the legacy, but yet you have to be careful not to get consumed by it.”

“The challenge and the frustration, I think, for anybody in the environment space is that it's so overwhelming. Yet that optimistic spirit has to emerge, and let's not get consumed by pessimism and frustration because us not doing anything is not an option.”

Joining us today is Dr. Krithi Karanth, CEO and Chief Conservation Scientist at the Centre for Wildlife Studies in India. A conservation biologist, Krithi’s research spanning 25 years encompasses many issues in the human dimensions of wildlife conservation. 

As a storyteller, her work has been covered by over 250 media outlets and featured in three award-winning BBC series, as well as documentaries by CBC and PBS. Among her many awards and recognitions, Krithi has been designated as a grantee and an explorer by the National Geographic Society.

She was also named one of Women of the Year by Elle India and Vogue India, as well as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

‍How can we mitigate human wildlife conflict and promote conservation and peaceful coexistence? Well, let’s talk to her and find out.

Welcome to the Founder Spirit podcast. And we're live today from Villars Summit 2024, thank you for joining us, Krithi. 

[02:39] Krithi Karanth: Thank you, Jennifer, very excited to be here and very honored that you invited me. 

[02:44] Jennifer: Krithi, I wanted to ask you, what was it like growing up as the daughter of a well-known conservationist in India? 

[02:52] Krithi: I don't think it was easy, but my grandfather was actually more famous than my dad. So there was a two-generation current force. 

And I think the beauty of growing up around exceptional people with clear purpose in their lives is that as a child, you kind of passively absorb this. So, for me, it was my grandfather, my father, and my mother who were all very accomplished, very purpose-driven, and ultimately did remarkable things for society, for wildlife, for children. 

And so I think there's this passive absorption of life is not just about making more money; it’s about finding what you want to do and do it with deep love and passion. And everything else will come along if you're able to figure out what you want to do. 

And sadly, most people I meet, even today, have not figured out what they want to do. And I think if we can enable our children to do that, you will have a society filled with people whose passion and purpose drive much more change than we're able to do today. 

[03:54] Jennifer: That's right. And so, Krithi, I also wanted to ask you, when was the first time that you saw a tiger? 

[03:59] Krithi: I was about two years old. I think, you know, my mom also had a pretty busy career, so when she had to travel, she left me with my dad, which meant that I spent a lot of time with him tagging along. 

And I would say the first 17 years of my childhood (was) just watching animals for the sheer joy of watching animals. There was no, I want to be a scientist, I want to study these animals. There was no, I want to be a conservationist, I want to save these animals, simply the sheer joy of watching them. 

And, yeah, so I saw my first tiger and leopard by the time I was two, I was tracking tigers when I was eight, I was learning to set up camera traps. 

But I also saw very closely the conservation challenges of trying to support people while trying to protect wildlife in India. And this was through my dad and all of his amazing colleagues and the work they did.

So I wasn't really, I mean, if you ask me, as a child, I wouldn't have picked wildlife science or conservation as a career. And I think that has kind of evolved, you know, in the last 25 years. 

[04:59] Jennifer: That's right. You had mentioned that you had wanted to be a lawyer…

[05:04] Krithi: Or an architect, pretty far from those two right now (chuckles). 

[05:07] Jennifer: So how did you end up choosing or did you choose to study environmental science, or did you feel like that? 

[05:14] Krithi: So I started my undergraduate career saying, I want to be a microbiologist, but very quickly figured out that in microbiology, you need to be really good at chemistry, and I didn't like chemistry. So then the closest thing that allowed me to take my love for biology, but then integrated with geography and history was the field of environmental science. 

So by the time I was 19, I had started to major in environmental science. And I would say the last 25 years, the broader interest in the environment then got narrowed down very much to a wildlife focus by the time I was doing my masters at Yale and designing a field project in India. 

[05:48] Jennifer: Right. So the mission of the Center of Wildlife Studies is to safeguard and conserve India's rich and diverse wildlife heritage. And it's also part of your family history or family legacy. 

Can you tell us a bit about the founding story of this organization? How did it come about? 

[06:08] Krithi: So, in 1984, my father transitioned from being an engineer, farmer to wanting to be a wildlife biologist. He got some training in the US and then came back to India and set up this nascent Indian NGO called the Centre for Wildlife Studies with literally 1,000 rupees that I think my grandfather loaned him or something. 

So I think in a world where we focus on startups and evolution of lots of new organizations, which is important, I think there's also deep value in organizations that have survived for 20-40-100 years.  

And so when you run an organization that has a remarkable legacy, I think there's a responsibility to celebrate the legacy, but yet you have to be careful not to get consumed by it. 

And then figure out, the mission and purpose of that organization, how does it evolve as society evolve, and the needs and challenges in India and elsewhere evolves today. 

[07:06] Jennifer: So you already mentioned the word challenge twice.Yes.

[07:12] Krithi: So I think if you look at how the world view nature today, there's a lot more people that care. There's a lot more children that care, there are a lot more adults that care, people want to conserve nature. 

So I think there's the much broader public support and recognition that environment is a key actor in the world. And there's a lot more money than, say, 1984 or the 1950s. 

But I think the scale of the challenge has also gone up. You have a lot more people dependent on land, you have a lot less wildlife. I mean, there's enough reports saying 60% to 70% of the planet's wildlife is gone now.

So are we going to be a society that values nature and wildlife particularly and make sure that we set up enough safeguards in place? Or are we going to be content just having animals in zoos and just going to see zoos and a few curated parks and saying, that's the extent of nature we as humans will tolerate. 

[08:10] Jennifer: Right. It's interesting because you and I, we had talked about what wildlife was like in India back in the 1900 and what it was at its rock bottom between the 50s and the 70s, and then what it is today. So can you take us through that journey? 

[08:25] Krithi: So I think I got an interesting glimpse into this because when I was doing my PhD 20 years ago, what I decided to look at was actually what had happened to India's storied mammals. 

And with the British being in India, they had set up, they had maintained meticulous records of where they had shot and seen animals. So tigers, bears, elephants, rhinos, what have you.

And so I was able to recreate where animals had been seen in the 1900s and then what had happened to them 100-125 years later. And what emerged from that story is pretty extraordinary. This loss of wildlife is not something that's happened over 500,000 years, the collapse has literally happened in the last 125 years. 

First driven by trophy and bounty hunting that people engaged in, where they just went and shot out these big animals to keep them as trophies. Then followed by massive agricultural intensification that took place, that took out a lot of forests, grasslands, wetlands in India. 

So you had fewer animals, you had much less space. And that's resulted in this terrific collapse of wildlife that happened. And then post-independence India, like many other countries in the world, particularly by the 1970s, had set up very strong wildlife laws, launched flagship conservation programs like Project Elephant, Project Tiger, which would had a mission to bring back these animals. 

And today, I think success is a mixed bag. In certain parts of India, wildlife are thriving, parks have hit their carrying capacity. In certain parts of India, wildlife are completely decimated.

And so the challenges are where it's decimated, what do you need to do to bring back wildlife? And then places which are saturated, you're seeing new emerging threats like human wildlife conflict becoming a really big issue because there's just not enough space in these highly packed parks with animals like elephants and leopards and tigers moving out and running into people and causing conflict.

So I really think in the next 20-25 years, we're really going to have to figure out how you're going to rebalance this so that there is space. 

[10:30] Jennifer: For wildlife, for both humanity and the wildlife to thrive. 

[10:34] Krithi: Yeah, absolutely. 

[10:35] Jennifer: Yeah. And in our conversation earlier, you had mentioned that the population of India has basically grown like 500%, over the last… 

[10:44] Krithi: Yeah. It's a six-fold growth, between 200 to 250 million people in the 1900s, so now 1.4 billion people. 

And we have to remember of that 1.4 billion people, 800 to 900 million, still live in abject poverty, maybe landless, or hold very very small pieces of farmland, still don't enjoy the benefits that middle class and wealthy Indians do. 

So there is a disconnect between this growing middle class where a lot of people have been uplifted from poverty, but there's still a huge base of Indians struggling to make basic needs met. 

[11:21] Jennifer: So, you know, it's interesting, much of your research on wildlife in India and in Asia over the last 25 years has been focused on the human dimension of wildlife conservation. 

What is the human dimension? And how do we play a role living in harmony, side by side with nature and with this wildlife? 

[11:44] Krithi: So I think a lot of wildlife biologists start out because they're deeply passionate about particular animal or a particular park that they want to save. 

For me, I realized that the complexity of human challenges, people struggling to make basic needs, feed their family, means that when there is an issue with animal, it's going to lead to retaliation and conflict.

And so one is what can you do to mitigate threats so that people don't harm wildlife. And the second piece being, what can you do to create opportunities.

So, for example, I think even today, the potential of wildlife tourism in India is there's a lot more we can do where tourism opportunities can be created to benefit local communities. And I think it is this sort of push and pull thing where you have to incentivize, improve people's lives, give them economic opportunities that directly benefit them. 

That is going to make them realize that when you live next to the best parks in the world for tigers and elephants, there is a cost to it, but the opportunities we've created enable them to bare the cost. 

One thing that I think is really special about India is our general high cultural ethos and tolerance for wildlife. Whether it's because we've had a lot of animistic religions, whether there's a lot of gods that somehow incorporate some animal in worship or in use or in prayer. 

And I think this cultural appreciation for wildlife and tolerance has really kept animals alive in a place compared to our neighbors, where the very same animals are gone today. 

So how do you harness tolerance? How you foster cultural tolerance is almost as important as creating economic opportunities and other ways to support people. 

[11:36] Jennifer: Yeah, I mean, the complexity of challenge of wildlife conservation, just from what I'm hearing at Villars, and I'm sure that you are as well. 

Whether it's climate change, whether it's biodiversity, whether it's the coral reefs that are dying, whether it's wildlife conservation, fundamentally, it comes down to the human element. I mean, it's about the humanity and how do we live in harmony to prevent all these things from happening. 

I don't know if you have any insight on this, but I always think that the change comes within, within each of us individually. And it's sometimes difficult to realize that change when you're living in abject poverty. 

As you said. 800 million of the 1.4 billion people in India, that's over 50% that actually live in poverty. So they're not necessarily gonna care about the animals.

[14:30] Krithi: You know what’s fascinating because of the work we do through our conservation programs. We're in a lot of villages, we interact with people all the time.

And inherently, when you talk to people, there's many of them just point blank, say, these animals have been around as long as we have, they have a right to this space. 

The challenge for me becomes when a herd of elephants comes and wipes out my crop that I've been growing for six months, so I can't feed my family for the next six months or a year. That's when it quickly transitions from our wildlife to your wildlife, right?  

And inherently, I don't think... I think we're an amazing place where the gut instinct is not to shoot animal or chase it. And I can compare this to lots of countries in Europe or even North America where a wolf shows up after 40 years or a coyote or a lynx, and the first thing people want to do is go get a gun and shoot it. 

That is not the case in India, and I think that is something we need to really build on. And one of the ways we're doing it is really working with kids who live around these wildlife parks. We have a conservation education program that works with children between ages of 10 and 13. 

We get them to understand our interconnectedness to nature, how lucky they are to live next to these amazing animals, and to change the narrative from conflict to coexistence and inspire kids to become stewards of these places.

And I think it has to be done early. It has to be done with lots of kids because literally the people living with wildlife are the ones who are going to pretty much take care of it, determine the fate of many species. 

[16:14] Jennifer: It's interesting. Yesterday there was the film, I don't know if you saw that, Valley (of the Bears)... 

[16:18] Krithi: I saw, yeah, but this is your life. This is my life. I mean, it's bears, it's leopards, it's elephants, it's a whole bunch of species. 

But I do think a lot can still be done. We have another conservation program which addresses conflict where it is a toll free number, you call us for help, our staff arrive on the scene. We are now working in six different parks in India. 

We've helped you file the compensation claim with the government, but the money doesn't come from us, the money comes from government. And it is the fact that you're helping people, whether they've called you once in the last eight years or they've called you 50-60 times. And we're able to respond. 

And I think that's where the confidence builds in these communities that you as an outsider are not just coming for the animals, you're coming to help people. 

[17:03] Jennifer: And all it takes, actually, is one person to care. 

[17:06] Krithi: Yeah, and one person who shows up and again. 

And we have 19 staff that cover six parks in India. And we're hoping to scale this to over 100 parks. And it's not very resource intensive. It's a simple, pretty much everybody has a cell phone they can call for help, and it is the showing up every single time and helping them resolve it or cope with it is what's going to make a difference. 

[17:30] Jennifer: And that was my takeaway, actually, from watching the film, is that it just takes one person to care and then they can inspire other people to join the journey with him. So that was quite significant, and it's also just a beautiful, beautiful story. 

I'm sure you have a beautiful story as well, and it's been well-documented in the BBC documentary about the Big Cats Diaries. 

One thing I wanted to ask you is when you spend time with these animals, usually you're observing them from a distance. It's not like having a house pet, a cat or a dog. 

[18:05] Krithi: You can have a respectful distance where neither they're alarmed or neither do you have to live in fear of something going wrong. 

[18:13] Jennifer: That's right. I want to ask you, what is it like for those of us who might never get to see a tiger… 

[18:20] Krithi: Well, I hope you will come see tigers. 

[18:22] Jennifer: (chuckles) I hope so, too. But for some of us who might not ever get to be in the presence of a tiger, what is it like to be in the presence of these majestic animals? 

[18:34] Krithi: So I think there's like a flood of emotions. But it's interesting, every time I take somebody who's never seen a tiger to go and look for them, the first thing I say is I don't promise, it comes down to luck and serendipity and a lot of other things and karma (chuckles), that's the one I saved for the end of the trip. 

And there's sort of multiple joys. So for me, I've been watching them for 42 years now. And every single time when there's a possibility of seeing a tiger, which is you first hear the alarm calls, then out of nowhere, this cat will emerge. 

And if you're lucky, you get to watch it for 15-20-45 minutes, which happens a few times. Most of the time you see it for 30 seconds or a minute and it's gone. But that one moment of seeing this animal, literally, like, the adrenaline rush, and it just replays in your head. And this is why I go to the field every month. This is why I hang out with my teams. 

And for me, it's not just tigers that bring that joy. I feel equally excited when I see bears or wild dogs or leopards or elephants,  so it's a larger set of species for me. And it never gets old, it never gets boring. And the thrill of will I see it again or was this it…

And I've seen many people, the first time they've seen this animal, and for the rest of their lives, they talk about it. And usually, the first thing people come up to me and the first stories, I was here and I was doing this, and this is how I saw my first tiger.  

And everybody wants to share that when I saw a tiger story, which is pretty special. I don't know how many animals invoke that. 

[20:15] Jennifer: Yeah. I think it's that sense of awe, right? That you're in nature completely vulnerable, and you're in the presence of this animal that could basically kill you. 

[20:26] Krithi: Yeah, but they most often don't It's so spectacularly beautiful. And you’re just like, I mean, truly one of nature's most perfect creations. And you're often just left speechless. 

[20:40] Jennifer: Going back to karma and serendipity, I was at Yellowstone (National) Park two or three years ago, and it was super hot. 

And I remember visiting it as a teenager, the summer actually in Yellowstone was quite cool, and I had to wear a jacket. And when we went back just two years ago with my kids, it was really hot. 

[20:57] Krithi: So change is happening. 

[20:58] Jennifer: Yes, change is definitely… and I was really shocked 30 years later. 

And then I remember on the second to the last day, I said to my husband, I said, we haven't seen a bear yet, you know, literally, we haven't seen a bear. He's like, forget it, it’s like 30 degrees celsius outside at noon, bears are not going to come out. I was like, yeah, I think he's right. 

And then the next day, we were in a remote part of the park, and we were just pulling out from a parking lot, and there was a female bear that crossed the road, literally, in front of us. 

And then we all jumped out, of course, and the bear, she moves slowly because it's super hot. And we just stayed with her for about two or three minutes, and then she was gone into the woods. 

And I'm like, you know what? She heard my call. (chuckles) It's 11:30, it’s almost noon, it’s super hot, but she heard me, and then she came out. 

[21:47] Krithi: This bear moment will forever come back in your mind at all kinds of times. And I think that's very re-energizing, and I think good for most people to see. 

[21:58] Jennifer: Yeah. I mean, I really believe karma, and I'm a very spiritual person, so I like to think that I put out an intention. I called the bear literally, I could not believe it, it was amazing.

[22:10] Krithi: I mean, I've had moments like this with many animals, and if tomorrow it happened, I'd be so thrilled. It is what it is. 

[22:16] Jennifer: And it always makes me think how small we are and why humans now dominate this planet, because actually, we're actually quite vulnerable. I mean, these animals are, you know, magnificent animals. 

[22:30] Krithi: There was a writer who coined this spectacular term calling us the God species. And in some sense, we are directly or indirectly deciding the fate of millions of other life forms. 

And that's where I think these moments spent in nature really help you reset your internal compass on the value of human and non-human life. And all life matters. 

[22:54] Jennifer: Yes. And you also create that connection, you get the sense that we're all connected, and that sense of awe being in the present. 

[23:01] Krithi: And we were all designed differently. I mean, humans have some advantages. Tigers have other ones, elephants have different ones. 

And appreciating these multiple models and designs in nature that are just there and each one created to perfection in its own right. And, you know, what gives you the authority to wipe all the other designs out? 

[23:23] Jennifer: And is there a wildlife that you have connected with personally in observing them? 

[23:28] Krithi: For me, it's as much about being in wilderness as it's great when I get to see the animals. There's just this crazy rush of hormones and emotions at the same time. 

But I'm equally content just sitting in places like Villars, places deep in the tropical forests of India, where you're just sitting in nature and letting the sunshine, a few leaves rustle and taking a breath of air. 

And I think that inner peace and calming of the mind that takes place if you allow these moments to appear in your life, they're priceless. 

[24:03] Jennifer: So it's more about being than doing, but we're…

[24:06] Krithi: I think when you do a lot, you need moments where you are just being. So you can rebuild and re-center and go back out and do. And I think that combination is needed. 

[24:18] Jennifer: Right. And I also think that we often mix up our identity with our job title, and that is related to what we do, not who we are, which is being.

You had mentioned that success is a mixed bag right now for you. Can you tell us some of the successes that you've had in the past? 

[24:36] Krithi: I think early on in my career, maybe I thought success was having a whole bunch of scientific papers published with my name as the first author. But I am very clear, at least for the last nine years, that's not the case. 

Being trained as a scientist, you're kind of brainwashed into thinking that's pretty much the mark of success. And about ten years ago, after I moved back to India, I started to get very frustrated that most of the science just sits and is not applied, is not used.

And my own research focus has always been very applied. But the frustration was it's not really having impact on either helping people or helping wildlife. And so there's been sort of a concentrated effort on my part to take the science and design. 

You know, we've now had five different conservation programs at the Centre for Wildlife Studies. I call them my wild babies, so wild seve, wild shaale, wild surakshe. There's a whole suite of programs that empower communities and enable people and inspire kids and help people overcome challenges with wildlife. And that has been a lot more gratifying. 

But I'm constantly looking to see. I mean, yes, you have a good program. The next logical step is to scale it. But sometimes you have to recognize that maybe it doesn't need to be scaled, sometimes it just stays a localized thing. 

And for me, the challenge is can you have impact much larger and wider and deeper? And there's things you can do as an individual, things we can do as Centre for Wildlife Studies. 

But really now the focus is on can we build partnerships with other individuals, other organizations, where we may not necessarily be the ones doing the work. We are happy to share knowledge, learn, and empower other groups of people. And I think that's when true impact happens, when lots more people start to use things that are working. 

And so the challenge and the frustration, I think, for anybody in the environment space is that it's so overwhelming. It's easy to be pessimistic about stuff. And so what can you do as one individual in one organization? 

And I think we can pull off some spectacular wins, but find those meaningful partnerships and find those meaningful donors who really care and will ride with you through the ups and downs. 

[26:53] Jennifer: And then where would you like to see the Centre for Wildlife Studies five to ten years from now? What is your vision for the future? 

[27:00] Krithi: I think, CWS, we're unique because we do good scientific research that's applied to conservation impact. And we're sitting in this unique space where the science actually leads to conservation action. 

And so I would like us to be the place that people come for learning and also innovating and trying new things. Maybe not all of them will work, and recognizing that some of the stuff will fail, but the ones that work, where do we take it out to? 

And yes, we may be based in India, but I see that a lot of the work we do is very relevant to the rest of South Asia, to Africa, and maybe even in Europe and North America where there are large animals. 

So I think the uniqueness is the fact that you're trying to build this coexistence, peace between large wildlife and people. And wherever there's large wildlife, which is all continents on the planet, I think there's lessons to be learn both ways. 

[27:56] Jennifer: There was a panel which you moderated yesterday. And so, in your opinion, how can we advance system change through scientific research? 

[28:07] Krithi: So I think science has always played second or third fiddle to the bigger economics piece, and then technology and then science. And I think the barriers and enablers of science are very different in different countries. 

And for science to truly advance, I happen to be sitting in a panel which was looking at specifically two winners of the Frontier Planet Prize, and their scientific papers that have led to actually impactful outcomes for what they were looking at. 

And I think, so how can we enable science? And it starts at every level, there's a lot of emphasis on STEM education, making sure kids love biology and chemistry and physics and are not in fear of subjects like this. 

And then all the way through, when you hit higher educational levels, you see, particularly in graduate school, I would find that a lot more women would be getting masters and PhDs, but post getting that degree, they would drop out from being scientists because of trying to balance other things in life. 

And so what are the enablers that allow people to explore science at a young age? What are the enablers that allow people to do science and do science in different contexts? 

Most people who are studying science are kind of brainwashed into thinking that you have to be a professor in a university to be doing top notch science. I strongly disagree with that. Because there are government scientists, there are nonprofit scientists, there are independent scientists, there are think tank scientists. That body of scientific knowledge comes from a very wide set of people. 

And so how do you foster science? And then particularly, in parts of the world which may not have a long history of doing science, how do you build systems that enable, more institutions and more individuals to do science? 

So I think that is something we have to consciously invest in. And having a prize is a great thing. I think a lot of these prizes do that, they uplift scientists from just being in a particular institution to suddenly the world waking up to all the interesting, cool things science can do. 

But I think we need to go much beyond prizes and really look at systematically what are the barriers that dissuade people at different stages from continuing as a scientist.

[30:25] Jennifer: And then as a scientist and as a researcher, how can we convince the non-believers?

[30:32] Krithi: So I think one big piece that's missing with most scientists are people are terrible communicators. So everything is about facts and figures and numbers, and I'm not super confident. You're trained to be extra extra cautious, so you underplay stuff.

And I think one thing I've been lucky with is that very early on in my scientific career, I got picked to be an explorer with National Geographic. And as part of that, I really learned to tell the story of whatever piece of science I wanted to communicate and I love working with filmmakers, with photographers, with musicians, with artists, because I think creatively bringing out science can actually have far more impact than a scientist bringing out science.

So I think one just really improving how you communicate the value of the work as simply as possible, and then finding partners who are supremely talented and way more creative than you are to help you communicate that story is really needed. 

[31:34] Jennifer: That's right. So here at Villars, we have the Dutch artist. 

[31:37] Krithi: He's amazing. He's just… I mean, when you see that video of how tree networks, it stays in your mind. You're never going to forget that. 

And we've been lucky. Even at CWS, we have worked with artists to put out children's books. We have made award-winning documentaries on very small budgets with independent filmmakers that have gone to the best wildlife film festivals in the US and UK and won against the big blue chips.

And we've partnered with the National Geographics and the BBC's to tell the story. So I think no amount of storytelling is enough. And all scientists need to learn to communicate that much better. 

[32:13] Jennifer: Yeah. It's about having a better narrative, absolutely agree with you. And now we're on the last day of the Villars Symposium, so what are your key takeaways so far? 

[32:24] Krithi: So I think this is a very unique set of people because clearly we're all on the same side, which, again, doesn't always bode well. I think we need to have people different from us come here as well. So the time is not spent on convincing people, it's more what can we do together. 

I come to something like this simply to learn. And every session you're sitting with somebody so different from you, from a venture capitalist to a technologist, and maybe you can't collaborate with them, but there's always learning that happens. 

And I think there is this - we, all of us get very pessimistic and frustrated with what each of us are trying to do. And when you come to an event like this, you realize that the similar struggles are across everybody here. 

Yet that optimistic spirit has to emerge, and let's not get consumed by pessimism and frustration because us not doing anything is not an option. How fast, how quickly, how big, we can always debate about. But I think this is a place of do’ers, I have no doubt about that. 

[33:29] Jennifer: And as someone that's lived through conservation of wildlife for all of your life, what have you learned about humanity? 

[33:37] Krithi: I think for me it is inherently, I think, approach people with some humbleness and some friendliness. Don't assume that the other side is negative or is not going to engage with you. 

And I think earlier on my career I had that thing that, okay, either you care about what we do or you don't. And if you don't, then I don't want to engage with you. And I've kind of completely flipped that now. 

So every person I meet is to learn more about them. And then secondly, is there a potential to do something together? And sometimes there isn't. You just meet a fun, nice human being, which is okay, but there are these magical moments where you realize that you've met somebody, you can collaborate and do something that you never thought was possible. 

[34:24] Jennifer: Yeah, having empathy and having compassion is really important. 

[34:28] Krithi: And acknowledging failure, we don't want to acknowledge failure. I think with this progress, success, what next, what next? Many things are not going to work and it's okay. 

And I think, at least with our kids, that strength of purpose, but combined with try lots of things, it's okay if most of them don't work. And I think that's really needed. 

[34:51] Jennifer: And to the next generation, are you looking for your kids to take over the CWS one day? 

[34:57] Krithi: No, not at all. All I'm looking for is both my daughters to find what they love to do and whatever that may be professionally, learn to be independent. And that's pretty much the only expectations that I have. 

And as far as CWS, I think time will tell. I'm hoping we can build a fantastic 2nd, 3rd, 4th line of leadership, and that's what will continue to grow. And maybe if we don't get there, sometimes it's okay to say this institution ran its course, (it) did a good job for 30-40-50-100 years. 

But let's close the mission and the vision if you don't see a tangible path out forward, which people are very scared of because you get obsessed with legacy. And I think that's something I think about a lot of at, when does it make sense to keep an institution going? When does it make sense to close it down? 

[35:51] Jennifer: Well, it's the rise and the decline, which we see with empires anyway. 

[35:54] Krithi: Yeah. And most corporations, how many corporations have lasted more than 100 years? Very few, right. How many academic, I mean, some universities go back 400-800 years. But for the most part, you're lucky if you survive 50 years. 

[36:09] Jennifer: It’s true, and we're only here on earth for a short amount of time anyway. We're just passing through, (chuckles) right? So I always tell my friends, like, hey, we're just passing through. You know, the earth has been (in) existence for billions of years.

[36:20] Krithi: And it will go well past all of us. 

[36:21] Jennifer: Exactly, I said it'll be around. And we're barely here for 100 years, even less, so having that mentality is really important. 

And then, Krithi, how can we support you and CWS? 

[36:33] Krithi: For me, I think it's about finding partners who believe in our mission, because truly, we live in a sea of environmental problems today. You could care about water, you could care about pollution, you could care about wildlife. Whatever you care about is going to make a difference. 

And I think for us, it's to find people who realize that wildlife, non-humans matter. And that's when real relationships are built. And so really looking for people from around the world who we can learn from, who we can partner with and see what else we can do together. 

[37:08] Jennifer: And last but not least, what does the founder spirit mean to you? 

[37:11] Krithi: Well, I consider myself a re-founder. (chuckles) 

I think the founder's spirit is to be curious, to be bold, to be fearless, to admit when things are not working. And maybe you have to stop or change course, but never give up. 

[37:31] Jennifer: Thank you very much, thank you for taking the time. 

[37:33] Krithi: Thank you!

[37:35] Jennifer: If this podcast has been beneficial or valuable to you, feel free to become a patron and support us on Patreon.com, that is P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com/TheFounderSpirit. 

As always, you can find us on Apple, Amazon and Spotify, as well as social media and our website at TheFounderSpirit.com. 

The Founder Spirit podcast is a partner of the Villars Institute, a nonprofit foundation focused on accelerating the transition to a net-zero economy and restoring planetary health. 

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