Dr Amrita Neelakantan is the executive director of the Network for Conserving Central India (NCCI). She has been a part of the NCCI from 2014 and has more than 19 years of experience as a conservation professional with a keen interest in human-nature dynamics. She holds a doctorate from Columbia University (New York, the U.S.A) that she earned under the guidance of Prof. Ruth DeFries. Her thesis study was a post-resettlement study around Kanha National Park - globally recognized for a crucial and healthy population of wild tigers. She is also the founding member and an active participant for multiple coalitions that are at the forefront of connectivity conservation and human-nature interactions. Previously, she's had the privilege to have lived and worked in three of the world's biodiversity hotspots in Ecuador, Kenya and Madagascar.