Our Team

Subindra Bogati

Subindra Bogati is the Founder and Chief Executive of the Nepal Peacebuilding Initiative, where he oversees the organisation’s development and growth as well as operations and programmes. He has over 12 years of experience designing and managing peacebuilding, development and humanitarian response programmes in Nepal. He has authored and co-authored numerous publications on peacebuilding and humanitarian issues. He holds a master’s degree in international relations from London Metropolitan University. He was a Chevening Fellow at the University of Birmingham on democracy, rule of law and security in 2009.

Ankita Singh Rathour

Ankita Singh Rathour has been working in the field of gender and armed violence for the last several years. She has a significant experience of working on community security issues. She also has an experience of working in the conflict sensitive development programs with non-governmental organisations. Ankita holds MA in Conflict, Peace and Development Studies and MA in Sociology.

Riya Basnet

Riya Basnet is an advocate and specialises in human rights and women’s rights. She has an extensive experience working on human rights, gender equality, youth and peacebuilding in Nepal.

In the past, she worked with National Reconstruction Authority as a Communication Consultant, and with Scott Wilson Nepal as a researcher and with Students for Liberty as a South Asia Program Manager. She has organised youth and economic development related conferences and workshops both in national and international levels.

Dr Richard Bowd

Dr Richard Bowd is a conflict transformation and peacebuilding specialist with over a decade of programming, analysis and research experience in the areas of conflict, peace and security. Dr Bowd has worked in various geographical areas including the Balkans, the Great Lakes region of Africa, East Africa, South-east Asia, South Asia and the Middle East covering a range of activities including: conflict transformation and peacebuilding; gender, peace and security; conflict sensitivity and Do No Harm (DNH) approaches; refugee, IDP and former combatant return and reintegration, civil society strengthening, peace education, armed gang mediation, community security, armed violence reduction, training in conflict management techniques and community mobilisation / outreach and reconciliation in fragile states. This work has been conducted while contracted to small and large INGO’s and the United Nations during which Dr Bowd has held management and advisory positions in projects and programmes ranging from low budget (40,000) to large budget ( 14,000,000), all within the post-conflict context and involving the engagement with and management of a number or national and international stakeholders. Dr Bowd serves as an advisor for the Nepal Peacebuilding Initiative.

Roshan Bahadur Khadka

Roshan Bahadur Khadka is the media and political consultant. Roshan who specialises in the political, military and national security issues also serves as the executive editor of www.muldharnews.com, a leading Nepali news portal in Nepal. He has reported on military and peacekeeping activities in South Sudan and Republic of Haiti. 

Deepak Prakash Bhatt

Deepak Prakash Bhatt, Ph.D, is a Member of Parliament and serves as an advisor for the Nepal Peacebuilding Initiative. His areas of interest have been Security Sector Reform (SSR), Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR), foreign policy, security cooperation and defense management.

Deepak is a Visiting Faculty at the Nepalese Army Higher Command and Management Course (HCMC), Nagarkot, Army Command and Staff College (ACSC), Shivapuri, Master’s in International Relations and Diplomacy (MIRD), Department of Conflict, Peace and Development Studies (DCPDS), TU, Institute of Crisis Management Studies (ICMS), Dhumbarahi, APF Command and Staff College, Sanogaucharan.

Deepak served as a member of Technical Committee formed under the Special Committee for Supervision, Integration and Rehabilitation of Maoist Army Combatants from March 2009 to September 2010 and member of Secretariat of the Special Committee from October 2010 to December 2012. He also has worked with International Alert, ActionAid, USAID, Saferworld, DFID, Norwegian Embassy, Transitional International, UNDP, IOM and UNHabitat. He has published several articles in books, journals, magazines and newspapers. 

Bigyan Raj Sharma

Policing Advisor: A former Additional Inspector General of Nepal Police (AIGP), Bigyan Raj Sharma has over 30 years’ policing experience in a wide range of specialist investigative, operational, training and advisory roles. He firmly believes in community oriented policing and played instrumental role in police initiatives like “Police with Smile” and “Police My Friend”. He has extensive international experience as a commander of international policing operations.

Pawan Kumar Sen

Survey Specialist

Pawan Kumar Sen is the Executive Director at Himalaya Comprehensive Research and a Consultant Researcher at NPI. He has extensive experience in designing and implementing quantitative surveys since 1998. He has been undertaking series of nationwide political opinion polls called Nepal Contemporary Political Situation since 2004 in a capacity of statistician. He has also involved in several studies on women’s accessibility to health services and facilities. He was one of the team members that conducted citizen and institutional surveys for the project ‘Sajhedari Bikaas’ (Partnership for Local Development) in six districts of mid-west and far-west regions for the USAID Nepal since 2013. He has co-authored six opinion poll reports: 1999 General Election Opinion Poll: How Voters Assess Politics, Parties and Politicians and Nepal Contemporary Political Situation (I, II, III, IV and V). He also provided technical assistance to a survey project in Afghanistan undertaken by The Asia Foundation between 2007 and 2012, and co-authored the reports A Survey of the Afghan People (2008 and 2009). With the aim of developing local capacity within Afghanistan for analysing large scale survey data, he trained Directors of The Asia Foundation Afghanistan in September 2010. He trained these individuals on survey method, survey data analysis and survey report writing. Recently, he worked with Social Science Baha to conduct a citizen perception survey (covering 65 districts with the sample size of 3,440 respondents) for the study ‘Access to Justice: Nationwide Legal Needs Survey’.

 Pawan completed his first Master’s degree in Statistics from Tribhuvan University (Nepal) in 1996 and second Master’s degree in Geo-information Science and Earth Observation from the International Institute of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (the Netherlands) in 2004. He has published research papers on contemporary political issues and state restructuring issues of Nepal in peer reviewed journals.

Apekshya Prasai

Apekshya Prasai is a PhD candidate in the department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she is affiliated with the Security Studies Program. She is a USIP-Minerva Peace Scholar for the academic year 2021-2022. Lying at the intersection of gender and violence, her research investigates gender dynamics during civil wars. Her dissertation, ¬“Gendered Processes of Civil War: Understanding Women’s Inclusion in Rebel Organizations” examines gendered practices, women’s activism and women’s inclusion within rebel organizations and interrogates how women’s activism influences gender dynamics within rebel groups. Her research focuses on South and South East Asia, particularly Nepal, where she has conducted fieldwork among former Maoist rebels. Previously, she has conducted field research on the impact of disaster aid on women’s economic empowerment post-2015 earthquake in Nepal and has also designed and implemented numerous programs to support violence affected women and children in the country. 

Apekshya is a non-resident fellow at Nepal Peacebuilding Initiative and a junior scholar with the International Policy Scholars Consortium and Network (IPSCON). In addition to the United States Institute of Peace, her research has received generous support from MIT’s Center for International Studies, MIT India Program, MIT Governance Lab and the Jeanne E Guillemin fund. Apekshya holds a B.A. in Government and Legal Studies with honors from Bowdoin College.

Tripani Baijali

Tripani Baijali, an ex-Maoist guerilla, is NPI's former District Coordinator in Rolpa. She returned to a civilian life after 12 years in politics. Nowadays, she is actively involved to protect the social and political rights of women and marginalized people.

Dr. Man Bahadur Bishwakarma

Dr. Man Bahadur Bishwakarma has completed his postdoc research on food security as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar (2016/17) at Brandeis University, USA. He obtained PhD on Social Inclusion in Microfinance in 2010 from Tribhuvan University, Nepal. He did postgraduate diploma in Social Studies from the ISS, Netherlands (2004), MA (Economics) in Rural and Cooperative Development (2000) and MBA (1991) in Financial management from Tribhuvan University, Diploma (1997) in Agro-Cooperative Management from Japan. He has long working experience with various international development agencies such as GIZ, Save the Children, UNICEF, CWS UK, UNDP etc. He has profound experience on conflict, peace and constitution building process as he led the Constitutional Dialogue Centre/UNDP during the Constitutional Assembly-I.  In 2010, he rejoined the government bureaucracy as a joint secretary and served as Director General for Labour Department, Chief District Officer in several districts, Secretary for provincial Government of Lumbini and Karnali and the Principal Secretary for Bagmati Province. He took retirement on April 2021. He has been serving as a visiting faculty member for MBA-BF Program of Tribhuvan University and has written a dozen of text books for college students and several books on development issues including Social Inclusion in Microfinance, Eradicating Hunger: Rebuilding Food Regime.  Some of his papers are available at https://brandeis.academia.edu/ManBk

Dr. Bk introduced the community-owned microfinancing model through his PhD research for enhancing access to finance, known as the third generation of microfinancing which is being practiced by some of the Microfinance Institutions. He initiated National Microfinance Summit in Nepal in 2008. He has conceptualized the ideas of Protective Liberalism, Liberal Socialism, Transformative Democracy and Coronomics (economy affected by the Covid-19 pandemic) through the various researches. He is now in advisory role as the Senior Thematic Expert for the theme: Federal Affairs, Governance and Public Service Delivery of Policy Research Institute (PRI) of the Government of Nepal.

Smriti Kafle

Smriti Kafle is a Program Officer at the Nepal Peacebuilding Initiative. Prior to joining the NPI, she has worked in the field of human rights, forced migration and civic space. Smriti holds B.A.LL.B degree and is currently a LL.M (International Law) student.

Gaurav Thapa

Gaurav is a financial literacy and inclusion specialist working in the field of financial education and policy in the Asia Pacific. He is Involved in research on financial education and inclusion, and framing grassroots program for government, non-government and private sector. He also serves as the managing director of FINLIT Nepal, an organization working on financial literacy and inclusion. He has worked with scholars in identifying the realities and approaches to understand the need of personal finance management at different levels. As a fellow, Gaurav has conducted research on Regional Financial Education Integration in South Asia at The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Secretariat. 

The Government of Nepal has recognized him for his research on Economic Rebuilding Post Earthquake where he worked as a Daayitwa Fellow with the National Reconstruction Authority. He has also worked with Ministry of Labor and Employment on policy research and enhancing employment methods for the youth in Nepal. He is a Caux Scholar 2017 working in the field of social entrepreneurship, focusing on the intersection of peacebuilding, livelihood development and financial education.

Gaurav is the US Embassy Youth Council Member Alumni 2016-17. He has worked as a consultant for USAID, GIZ, DFID, Save the Children International, Central Bank of Nepal, National Health Insurance Board, Nepal Bankers Association, Rural Microfinance Development Center among other national and international development agencies. His work has been awarded with Financial Innovation Award by the London Institute of Banking and Finance, 2017. 

He is also the member of UNESCO Entrepreneurship Education Network, Asian Programme of Educational Innovation for Development. 

Priyanka Jha

Programme Coordinator

Priyanka holds a Master’s degree in Conflict, Peace and Development Studies and an undergraduate degree in Media Studies. She has worked as a journalist, researcher and trainer where she specializes in the areas of social inclusion and gender equality. Priyanka has extensive work experience with non-governmental organizations and has a rich research portfolio contributed to projects examining media coverage, conflict-sensitive journalism, and gender sensitivity in Nepali media.

Samikshya Bhattarai

Program Coordinator

Samikshya is a graduate of Masters Programme in Peace and Conflict Studies from Department of Peace and Conflict Research (DPCR), Uppsala University. She is also a former Rotary Peace Fellow.  She has years of experience in the field of community development and social science research. She has conducted and been involved in different projects on gender and peace, transitional justice and foreign labor migration. Samikshya is a pracademic who wants to continue contributing to the field of development and social science  through her evidence based study findings. Her major areas of interest are human rights, positive peace and psychosocial health. She is a passionate individual driven to make access to justice a reality and just not a concept to talk about.