Sumit Arora joined us as our Associate Director in April 2021 to lead technology and partnerships for CWS. Sumit comes from a strong technology background and years of experience in leading technology projects with state and central governments at scale. He has completed the Executive Program in General Management from Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley and is a Climate Action Fellow from Anant National University.

Sumit ran a software company where he assisted small and medium businesses with their tech requirements which helped them scale their business. He has worked with businesses in a variety of domains such as manufacturing, education, fitness, mental health, food, local governments and law.

Sumit has worked with tech companies such as Samsung Electronics and Cadence Design Systems and holds a patent for his work at Cadence. With a deep interest in applying technology to the development sector, Sumit joined this space five years ago. He worked at Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy for more than 4 years where he led technology development for their Civic Tech Platforms which were used by more than 20 Million users across India. Over the years, Sumit developed a deep interest in the environment and climate space. Meeting Dr. Krithi Karanth in the Dasra Leadership Program in 2019 led to many discussions on linkages between biodiversity conservation and climate change. Sumit did a sabbatical with CWS in 2020 and decided to focus more deeply on these vital environmental challenges.

At CWS, Sumit has overseen the conceptualization and development of the Wild Connect platform (whose ideation came about with Dr. Karanth during his sabbatical). This has helped our field teams to use a central platform for data collection in low or no network areas. As the commitment to support conservation with technology Sumit is also planning to launch the platform for other organizations and plans to create an ecosystem of tech products to further the cause of conserving wildlife and wildlands.

Sumit strongly believes in the use of technology and partnerships in scaling wildlife conservation and research efforts. “CWS has been doing impactful work in wildlife research and also working with the communities who live around and depend on wildlife reserves. We are going to be scaling our programs across the Western Ghats and through partnerships across India and globally. To make programs more effective the use of technology and working with partners is a must, and I hope to play the role of a catalyst in the conservation space”.