India
Advisory Council Members

Sunil Deshmukh
Miami, FL
Founding Member, Sierra Club India Advisory Council

As a member of the Sierra Club's India Advisory Council, Deshmukh is helping to guide the organization through the process of creating strategic partnerships with India's leading environmental groups and to reach out and communicate effectively with others in the American non-resident Indian community.

Deshmukh is the former President of the Maharashtra Foundation, a 30 year old New York based, nonprofit organization which seeks to enhance the quality of lives of the underprivileged by supporting programs in the fields of healthcare, education, welfare and development of women and children. The Maharashtra Foundation has raised and donated over $12 million for the education and safety of rural women and slum children in India, Africa and the United States. The Foundation's primary goal is to "uplift the downtrodden," and sponsors MAYTRIN, a domestic violence program that helps support women from India who are living in the U.S. Fifteen years ago, Sunil created the prestigious "Maharashtra Foundation Social Service Awards" in the fields of Women's Empowerment, Social Reform and Environment.

Deshmukh is a member of the ACLU, a volunteer in homeless shelters and a tireless life-long activist, who promotes secular, democratic and non-discriminatory values. Before retiring in 1994 Deshmukh worked on Wall Street as a commodities trader with The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. and as Head of Commodity Trading at Citibank.

Deshmukh holds an MS degree from Cleveland State University, a MBA from Indiana University and JD from Loyola University of Chicago.

Sadhana Shenoy
Founding Member, Sierra Club India Advisory Council

As a member of the Sierra Club's India Advisory Council, Shenoy is helping to guide the organization through the process of creating strategic partnerships with India's leading environmental groups and to reach out and communicate with others in the American non-resident Indian community.

While Shenoy has been instrumental in identifying human and financial resources for the India program this is not her first leadership position in the Sierra Club. Shenoy has been active at the Club since 1999 - at the local level, and later as part of the National Finance Committee.

She has worked as a software engineer with Intel and other software companies. She has been an active volunteer with the Crag Law Center in Portland Oregon, since 2003, and is Chair of the Board and their Treasurer. Crag Law Center is a not-for-profit organization which provides very affordable legal services to conservation organizations, citizen groups and citizens working on environmental issues.

Since 2002, Shenoy has co-managed Portland's Hope Charities - a medical clinic providing free health services, educational scholarships and a vocational center for women in Kerala, Southern India. She is involved in a variety of social organizations providing services in the rural Konkan area of India.

Shenoy has a MS Computer Science from the Oregon Graduate Institute, and Bachelor's degrees in Business Administration and Accounting.

Pritpal Singh Kochhar
New York, NY
Founding Member, Sierra Club India Advisory Council
Member, Sierra Club International Committee
Member, Sierra Club International Outings Committee

As a member of the Sierra Club's India Advisory Council, Pritpal "Pepi" Kochhar is helping to guide the organization through the process of creating strategic partnerships with India's leading environmental groups and to reach out and communicate effectively with others in the American non-resident Indian community. As a member of the Sierra Club's International Committee, Kochhar works with other Club volunteer leaders to shape the organization's international policy and agenda.

For the past nine years Kochhar has been an International Outings trip leader with the Sierra Club. In that role he has planned and developed trips for Sierra Club members to a variety of countries with different conservation objectives. He has led hiking trips in Nepal and Iceland, wildlife trips to national parks in India, Costa Rica and Russia, and cultural and wilderness trips to Bhutan, Turkey and China.

Kochhar is the owner of PSK, Inc., full service real estate firm involved primarily in the acquisition, development, and management of residential property in New York City. Prior to owning his own business, Kochhar was an Assistant Vice President of Citicorp Investment Bank and an Associate at Goldman, Sachs & Company. At these global financial institutions Kochhar specialized in foreign asset transactions and loans and developing relationships with U.S. and international banks.

As an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University School of Business, Kochhar taught in the MBA program courses such as Mathematics for Business, Statistics for Management and Operations Research.

Kochhar is a Board Member of the Sikh Coalition, a community organization whose goals are to protect the civil rights of Sikhs in America in the post 9-11 aftermath of hate crimes, employment discrimination and profiling. He is also a Project Team Leader with New York Cares, the breakfast feeding Program at St. Bartholomew's where he manages volunteers and co-ordinates effort of the Church to feed the homeless.

Kochhar has B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, an M.S. in Statistics from the Indian Statistical Institute, and a MBA in Finance and Accounting from Columbia University, Graduate School of Business.

India Advisory Council Members

India
Advisory Council Members