Project YETI
PAST MENTORS
Meet the Inaugural Class of YETI Mentors!
Tenzin Rangdol
Acha La Mentor
Tenzin Rangdol graduated from the State University of New York at New Paltz in 2017 with a Bachelor of Science in International Relations. In 2015, she participated in the International Campaign for Tibet’s Tibetan Youth Leadership Program. In the summer of 2016, she joined Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) as a U.S.A grassroots intern. Following her internship at SFT, she interned at the Education Outreach Section of the United Nations Department of Public Information at the UN headquarters in New York City.
Namkha Yeshey Norsang
Jho La Mentor
Namkha Yeshey Norsang grew up in the pristine hills of Darjeeling, India. After graduating from UMass Amherst (where he was actively involved in the Students for a Free Tibet chapter) in 2016, he is currently at Georgia Tech pursuing a Masters in Robotics/Mechatronics. He has worked internships in both the medical device and commercial drone industries. In his free time, he loves working on electronic prototyping projects as well as playing and recording music.
Tsering Say
Acha La Mentor
Tsering Say is a third-year student at the University of Virginia on the Jefferson Scholarship pursuing a major in Political and Social Thought. Her research focuses on the history of Sino-Tibetan relations and potential future avenues for cooperation. Say graduated in 2015 from the United World College of the Atlantic in Llantwit Major, Wales on the Davis UWC Scholarship; she is from Annandale, Virginia.
Tenzin Kunsel
Acha La Mentor
Tenzin Kunsel moved to New York City from India when she was 9 years old. A University of Massachusetts Amherst Class of 2017 graduate, she completed a double degree in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and Physics and researched protein folding in an effort to understand protein folding diseases on a molecular level. Outside of the lab, Kunsel is a Tibetan singer who takes great pride in her culture and finds art as a meaningful and comfortable mode to express emotions.
Rinzin Dorjee
Jho La Mentor
Rinzin Dorjee attended boarding schools in India and the U.K. before coming to the U.S.
A Duke University Class of 2017 graduate, he studied International Comparative Studies, Italian and European Studies, and Markets and Management Studies. He is interested in learning and working on issues related to statelessness, forced migration, international refugee protection, and asylum procedure, and has conducted CBR projects in Nepal and Europe; he currently lives in New York City.
Loedoe Sangmo
Acha La Mentor
Lodoe Sangmo is currently working as a Clinical Information Manager in the Emergency Department of New York Presbyterian Hospital- Queens. Raised in Kurseong, India, she moved to Queens, New York at the age of ten. After graduating from Cornell University in 2014 with a major in Human Biology, Health and Society and minor in Global Health, Sangmo worked as a fifth grade teacher in East Harlem, New York through Teach for America. She will start medical school this fall at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Tenzin Palmo
Acha La Mentor
Palmo was born in India, raised in Chicago and currently lives in Los Angeles. She graduated cum laude from Connecticut College in 2013 with a liberal arts degree in Economics. Palmo is a POSSE scholar and has four years of experience in Finance Management Consulting at PricewaterhouseCoopers. She is currently on a sabbatical and working on pursuing her entrepreneurial goals.
Jigme Namgyal Taring
Jho la Mentor
Jigme was born in New Delhi, India and moved to the Washington DC area when he was five years old. He graduated from James Madison University in 2017 with a B.A. in International Affairs and a minor in Computer Information Systems. Jigme has interned at the U.S. Department of Commerce and served as a JMU Student Ambassador. Recently, Jigme was hired full-time as a Data Analyst at Booz Allen Hamilton.
Chonyi Lama
Acha La Mentor
Chonyi Lama grew up mainly in Springfield, Oregon and will be graduating from UC Berkeley this summer with a Bachelors in Computer Science. Last summer she worked under a professor doing research on Tibetan Optical Character Recognition and mainly focused her work on text analysis. One of their projects was to build a comparator of early texts from Tibetan Buddhism and Bon.
Tenzin Kunsang
Acha La Mentor
Tenzin Kunsang is 24 years old. She was born in Kathmandu, Nepal, moved to Boston when she was 3 years old, and subsequently raised there. She graduated from UMass Amherst in 2015 majoring in Public Health and minoring in Education. She is currently working on an oral history project with 2nd generation Tibetans in Boston area called Tibetan Resettlement Stories: Voices of Boston. Kunsang is currently serving as General Secretary for the Tibetan Association of Boston.
Tsering Tashi
Jho La Mentor
Tsering is an Investment Banking Analyst in Houlihan Lokey’s San Francisco office, where he focuses primarily on corporate financial advisory services for technology companies. He is most passionate about improving welfare through business and entrepreneurship. Tsering is a first-generation Tibetan-American and attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Occidental College with a degree in Economics.
Tenzin Lhanze
Acha La Mentor
Tenzin Lhanze was born in New Delhi, India and raised in Falls Church, VA. She is a senior at the Raymond A. Mason School of Business at The College of William and Mary, studying Finance and Mathematics. Lhanze’s passion for human rights advocacy has led her to internships at Human Rights Watch and serving as the President for her college’s chapter of Amnesty International. She is currently interning at the Urban Institute, a leading public policy think tank, in Washington DC.
Chenam Barshee
Jho La Mentor
Chenam is from the Washington DC area and currently living in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is a fourth-year student in the Batten School of Leadership & Public Policy at the University of Virginia, where he has done advanced studies in Tibetan language, has co-founded the Frank Batten Investment Fund, and works as a writing assistant at the Darden school of Business. Chenam has also served in the Tibet Corps program working at the Tibet Policy Institute in Dharamsala.
Urgyen Dolma
Acha La Mentor
Urgyen spent most of her childhood in Nepal and moved to NYC at the age of twelve. She is a senior at Fordham University, with a major in International Political Economy and hopes to work towards developing the least developed countries. Having done a variety of internships from Rubin Museum to being a youth rep at the United Nations, she is currently interning at Viacom International's Business Intelligence department.
Sonam Choera
Jho La Mentor
Sonam is an engineering consultant for Arup in Los Angeles, focusing primarily on the design of large infrastructure projects. He is passionate about the built environment specifically the intersection of economics, infrastructure, and sustainability. He also volunteers as a pro-bono consultant providing strategy services for environmental non-profits throughout L.A. Sonam is a first-generation Tibetan-American and graduated from University of California, Los Angeles with a degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Gyurme Karma
Jho La Mentor
Gyurme Karma was born in Nepal and raised in California. He graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 2013 with a degree in Business Management Economics. He was a Senior Associate at CliftonLarsonAllen in the audit practice focusing on the agriculture industry until May 2017. He is currently pursuing his MBA from Cornell University at the Samuel Curtis Johnson School of Management in Ithaca, New York.