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TAI & Dropenling Family >

Nima Tashi

Nima Tashi joined Dropenling in the summer of 2005 as coordinator after receiving his Master's Degree in Intercultural Leadership and Management from the School for International Training in Brattleboro , VT , and a BA in Business Administration from California University of Management and Sciences.  Nima brings to Dropenling a unique blend of international and local perspective, having grown up and worked in Lhasa , as well as in the US and Thailand .

Nima is dedicated to building local capacity in Tibet through the development of social enterprises, business training activities, and better business practices. Nima is known for his love of cultures, traveling, sports and his openness to others.

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Lhakpa Dhundrup

Lhakpa is from Shigatse Prefecture. He received training in accounting at the Tibet Autonomous Regional Commercial School. He joined Dropenling as accountant in summer of 2005. Lhakpa is familiar with both INGO and Chinese accounting systems. He reads and writes Chinese and Tibetan fluently, has working knowledge of the English language.

Before joining Dropenling, Lhakpa worked for The Mountain Institute on the Mr. Everest Conservation Project as accountant from 2000 to 2005.

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Tenzin Norbu

Tenzin Norbu was born in Shigatse and graduated from Shigatse school. From 1987 to 2006 he worked in the finance field and has nineteen years' experience in finance & accounting. In April, 2006 he joined Dropenling as a cashier as well as maintaining positive government relationships.

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Claire Burkert

Claire Burkert is originally from the US but has lived in the Himalayas for almost two decades. She has worked in craft preservation and development for nearly 20 years. In 1989 she founded a women's craft center in Nepal, and later worked in Vietnam in association with the Vietnam Museum of Ethonology and Craft Link, a Vietnamese NGO. As Asia representative for Aid to Artisans, an American not-for-profit organization, she has worked on artisan projects throughout Asia. She joined Dropenling in 2006 and is pleased to have the opportunity to work closely with Tibetan artisans through the Tibet Artisan Initiative and Dropenling Handicraft Development Center .

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Tenzin Norbu 

Tenzin Norbu is a man of few words but many ideas.  Tenzin joined TAI in 2004 as a product designer. Before joining Dropenling,  Tenzin worked for Costume Factory #2 as a designer of traditional costumes for Tibetan festivals. Before that, Tenzin worked with his two brothers as a painter.  Tenzin moved from Lhoka to Lhasa with his two brothers in 1998 with dreams of becoming a painter.

When not designing new products for Dropenling Handicraft Development Center, Tenzin can be found in various tea houses around Lhasa debating the finer (and not so finer points) of Tibetan culture.

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Passang Lhamo

Passang Lhamo was born in Penpo Village in Lhundrop County, where she grew up herding cows and sheep and began to cultivate her love of mountain climbing. Passang moved to Lhasa in 1980 with her family and began working at a monastery. It was at the monastery that she learned English and then went on to work as a tour guide until she joined TPAF in 2002.

Passang, nick-named 'Mountain Goat', has climbed Ganpelwutse holy mountain in Lhasa (5,500 metres) 5 times, the first time when she was 13 years old.

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Amy Frey

Amy Frey has a passion for handicrafts. A San Francisco resident, Amy moved to Tibet in 2002 on a six-month assignment to improve artisan skills, and stayed until 2006. Amy is now Dropenling's Emeritus Product Development Specialist and Honorary Tibetan. Amy has over 10 years of experience in fine arts, textile design, product design and social services. Before working in Tibet, Amy worked in a product design studio in San Francisco designing products for major retail stores in the U.S. A vehement believer in Fair Trade practices, Amy believes quality comes first, sales second. Her pursuit of this primary goal helped build Dropenling and the Tibet Artisan initiative into the unique position it holds today.

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Tengyal

Tenzin Gyalpo has worked with Dropenling since September 2004. He started out in the Dropenling retail emporium, where he handled sales and shipping. In April 2006, he joined the Product Development Team. He speaks and reads Tibetan, English, Hindi and Chinese. He is enthusiastic, creativite, and takes initiative to build Dropenling and TAI by frequently presenting new ideas for improving procedures and designs. Tenzin has an innate sense of design and is an excellent drawer, enhancing the product development team's ability to promote its product design responsibilities.

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Shilok Drolma

Shilok Drolma gets along with everyone. Born in Chamdo in eastern Tibet, Shilok moved to India when she was 7 years old, where she later attended the Welham Girls School. In 1992, Shilok returned to Lhasa and worked as a tour guide for 5 years. Shilok began working for TPAF in 2001 on the Tibetan Unemployed Youth Training Program, where she nurtured her desire to make a difference in Lhasa's growing unemployment problem.

In the summer of 2002, Shilok joined the Tibet Artisan Initiative, where she assists in business development, artisan coordination and training workshops. Shilok is fluent in English, Chinese and Hindi and has one of the largest assortments of Bollywood DVDs in Lhasa.

Shilok's name means 'to die and come alive again'. When she was born she was in a very deep coma (in fact she wasn't breathing) and her family thought she was dead. After one day's time she returned to consciousness during a special bathing ceremony where she was placed in alcohol. Later she was named Shilok by her late mother.

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Tony Gleason

Tony Gleason first came to China in 1990 as a student, and since then has accumulated over 5 years' living and working experience in China; joining Dropenling in 2005. Tony holds an MBA from Thunderbird and has over ten years' experience both in the private sector and with INGO'S. As Dropenling General Manager, his main goal is to ensure Dropenling's sustainable future as a social Enterprise. As you can see from the picture, Tony has a particular fondness for the Tibetan Dorjee - or Thunderbolt.

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Lhakdrun

Lhakpa Dolma Kyishee, better known as Lhakdrun, is the force behind TAI’s business training and small enterprise development program. Lhakdrun has forgotten more about business training then most people will ever learn. Having helped establish Tibet’s first joint venture in 1992, a German leather factory where she managed local and export sales, Lhakrun then moved on to the Chinese-German Technical Co-Operation Program (GTZ), where she managed its Community Development Program. During her time with GTZ, Lhakdrun implemented a series of training programs, linked entrepreneurs with credit providers, worked with villagers to establish micro-enterprises, and traveled across Asia to interact with community development specialists from around the world.

Outside of work, Lhakdrun enjoys gardening. A habit she picked up from her father who taught her Tibetan while she worked on a farm growing up in rural Tibet.

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Jigmi

Quite serious but humble and jolly too, Jigmi was born in Shigatse in western Tibet. After finishing his studies, he went to Nepal to get a modern education and then came back to his native land and worked as tour guide for one year. He was not so happy as a tour guide because he didn''t improve his knowledge. For that reason he left the tour guide job and joined a European Union Integrated Rural Development Project in Panam as a hygiene promotion officer. When this project finished, he started working with the Tibet Artisan Initiative in 2006 with responsibilities of coordinating artisan training activities.

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Passang Choedon

Passang Chuedon graduated in June 2006 from Yanbian University Science and Technology University with a B.A in English Education. Before university she taught in a school for orphans. From 2000-2002 she served as an accountant and health project for the INGO World Concern. Passang Chuedon joined TAI in August 2006, where she works in E-commerce establishing Dropenling's first online sales site (www.dropenling.com).

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Sonam Tsethar

Born in Nagchu prefecture, Sonam graduated from Nagchu high school. He attended driver training school for three years and afterwards worked for the China post office as a driver for three years. In 2002 he worked for a Canadian development project for four years as a driver. In 2006 Sonam started driving for TAI and Dropenling. Sonam enjoys playing guitar and is another one of TAI's famous singers.

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Arthur Holcombe, President TPAF

Arthur Holcombe focuses on the overall direction of TPAF project activities and on donor relations. Prior to establishing TPAF, Arthur was Resident Coordinator of all UN Operational Activities in China for six years and worked closely on microfinance and other poverty alleviation programs in western provinces of China. Arthur is also an associate of the Harvard University Fairbank Center for East Asian Research and the President of the United Nations Association of Greater Boston. He graduated from Harvard College and holds a Ph. D. in Economics from New York University.

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Dropenling Staff

Dropenling is fortunate to employ five trilingual Tibetan sales staff who are well versed in the background of each of the products as well as the stories that went into creating them. The sales staff are also on hand to assist in directing visitors to Dropenling and explaining all aspects of artisan traditions and products to them.

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TAI Advisors >

Bill MacArthur

Bill MacArthur was born in 1941 and was educated at Yale University and Columbia Law School. After practicing law on Wall Street and in Tokyo for five years, he joined American.  Express International Banking Corporation, working primarily on merchant banking transactions in Asia and the Middle East.

In 1978 with a colleague from AMEX he established an investment bank in Bahrain and an investment company in New York handling investment from the Middle East in the US. In 1982 he formed a real estate investment and development company which is active in the US and South East Asia.

Since 1998 he has engaged in various social development activities (education, micro-credit, women and children’s health issues, etc.) in the Philippines, Madagascar, India and Tibet.  Since 2001 these activities have been conducted the Brooksville Fund, Inc., a 501 (c)(3) charitable foundation.

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Lester Ross

Lester Ross is a partner in the Corporate Department of Wilmer Cutler Pickering LLP. His practice concentrates on mergers and acquisitions, foreign investment, financial services, project finance, energy and environmental law matters and capital markets.  

Mr. Ross has represented foreign companies in the agricultural, automotive, chemicals, energy, environmental, financial, high tech, pharmaceuticals, publishing and service industries in their strategic expansion in China. He also has extensive experience representing foreign banks and corporations in the United States. He has prepared environmental, health and safety audit protocols for multinational companies conducting business in China and advised clients on environmental regulatory matters in China. He has represented clients in trade investigations, dispute resolution and regulatory matters in China.

He is General Counsel of the American Chamber of Commerce – People's Republic of China and chair of the Board of Advisors of the International Montessori School of Beijing. Mr. Ross received his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 1990 and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan. Fluent in Mandarin, he has been a visiting scholar at the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences in Beijing and studied Chinese at Taiwan National University. He has conducted field work in China under the sponsorship of the Committee on Scholarly Communication with China of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Ted Wendell

Ted Wendell has been working with the Tibet Poverty Alleviation Fund since 1997 as its Treasurer and overall financial advisor. Born in Boston, MA in 1940, Ted received his BA at Harvard College and his MA from the University of Washington. At one point in his career Ted taught Mathematics at Marlboro College in Vermont before heading on to pursue a career in finance. Ted currently is the president of Boston Investor Services, a Principal at Boston Overseas Advisers, and a Trustee at Marlboro College. Most importantly, Ted is Dropenling Handicraft Development Center’s Treasurer and the provider of invaluable insight into accounting practices and strategic planning.

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