In her role as Strategy and Praxis Advisor, Padini works transversally across departments to anchor Health in Harmony’s work in an anticolonial framework of practice that centers communities and connections, and is rooted in a vision of planetary healing and liberation. Contributing to the growth and success of HIH’s strategic goals and the implementation of its values and efforts, this role is pivotal in expanding reach and impact on a global scale, and charts a pathway for HIH to be a liberatory planetary health organization.

Prior to joining HIH, Padini taught in universities for over a decade as a scholar-practitioner walking with Indigenous communities for land justice. More recently, she designed and operationalized the Earth Institute’s Women, Peace and Security program, collaborating with grassroots peace activists from around the world. Currently, she also serves as a political ecology consultant, and accompanies community organizations as a liberation strategist.

Padini holds a Doctorate in Geography, developing the field of decolonial feminist political ecology, and a Masters in International Development and Social Change, from Clark University, USA. She also holds a Masters in Communication from Madras Christian College and a Bachelors in Economics from Stella Maris College, in Chennai, India. Some of her publications can be accessed here. Drawing from her own Tamil ways of knowing and being, Padini also actively cultivates an art practice as a weaver and illustrator and is usually at her loom or workbench, playing with color, meaning, texture and tune.