Supriya Sahu is an officer of the Indian Administrative Service, who has had a long and illustrious career studded with pioneering conservation efforts. One of her early postings was as the District Collector of the Nilgiri Hills. Here, in 2002, she launched "Operation Blue Mountain", to ban single use plastics, years ahead of any other such initiatives anywhere in the world, recognised as a best practice to emulate by the UNDP.

She also undertook a massive citizen-led restoration exercise in degraded shola forests, planting over 42000 saplings in 24 hours, breaking the Guinness World Record by a large margin.

She has since been involved with various governmental roles, instrumental in shaping India's community radio programme, boosting the national "Doordarshan" broadcasting corporation, organising the small tea growers in the Nilgiris through INDCOSERVE to also be more eco friendly, and finally serving as the Forest Secretary, heading the State's Forest Conservation and Climate Change Department. In this role she has spear-headed numerous campaigns, "Meendum Manjapai" to encourage people to adopt the use of cloth bags and phase out plastics, added four new sites to the prestigious Ramsar global list of wetlands, numerous unique climate change related programmes, such as transforming 10 climate-smart villages, and launching a range of multi-million dollar of statewide missions to mainstream green energy and nature conservation.

She has recently moved to head the State's Department of Health and Family Welfare, and is already pioneering efforts to push the idea of "One Health", where the health of humans is linked to the health of their environments, centred around human-nature coexistence.