ABOUT
Kritee (Kanko), Ph.D., is a Buddhist priest, Climate scientist, Zen teacher, Grief ceremony leader, and Love-Justice activist. She is the founding guiding teacher of Boundless in Motion and a cofounder of Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center. For 12 years, before fully committing herself to these two nonprofit organizations, she served as a Director and Senior Scientist in the Climate Smart Agriculture program at Environmental Defense Fund. Her articles, interviews and peer-reviewed manuscripts have appeared in many mainstream, academic, contemplative and international outlets including the New York Times, BBC, Washington Post, Harvard Health, Yale Climate Connections, California Public Radio, Tricycle, Lion’s Roar, Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, Environmental Science and Technology, The Independent, The Hindu and India Today.
She believes that our collective survival, healing and belonging in these times of polycrisis depends on reindigenization. Reindigenization in turn depends on our ability to heal our traumas through meditation, ecodharma and ceremonies, and on using science and strategies rooted in Nonviolence. Her unique and loving approach to the climate crisis, racial justice, trauma healing and spirituality has led to invitations to lead retreats and workshops by many organizations including One Earth Sangha, Al Gore’s Climate Reality, 350.org, Stanford University, World Council of Churches, San Francisco Zen Center, Mind & Life Institute and Lama Foundation.
From leading meditation intensives (called sesshin in Zen tradition) to conducting workshops at the intersection of trauma healing and collective action, Kritee extends her welcoming embrace to people of all backgrounds. Her experience is that spiritual healing and releasing our personal and ecological grief in the presence of a loving community is necessary, this helps us unlock our gifts and serve our communities in a more radical way. Her inclusive and warm approach is reflected in her work with young adults, black, indigenous and other people of color, womxn, faith leaders, and those navigating the delicate interplay of different aspects of our ongoing polycrisis.
Kritee led a contemplative retreat with a focus on climate trauma and reindigenization for trauma researchers across the world at Mind and Life’s Summer Research Institute.
Background and lineages
Raised by a single mother in North India, Kritee grew up in the extended family of Mool Chand Jain, a visionary parliamentarian and lawyer whose life was an embodiment of Gandhian Nonviolence. Academically, Kritee was trained at the Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi, India) before arriving in the U.S. in 2001 to do graduate research in Earth and Climate Sciences at Rutgers and Princeton Universities. She has close to twenty-five years of cross-disciplinary research experience in several areas related to the climate crisis, food and water security as well biochemistry, microbiology and geosciences. See her CV for more details.
Kritee moves in this world paying homage to ancestors and mentors in at least four distinct lineages: Science, Justice, Zen and Healing. Modernity expects us to highlight and celebrate individuals but we might be most alive and effective when we see ourselves as part of ongoing lineages, groups, teams, collaborations and cooperatives. We might feel most supported when we have friends and elders who guide us, celebrate us and keep us accountable to our deepest values and aspirations. The humans, lineages, lands, institutions and communities that Kritee derives her love and power from and devotes her energy to are: Boundless in Motion, Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center, Cold Mountain Zen, Fierce Vulnerability Network, Mool Chand Jain, Beth Garrigus, Claire Wings, One Yagna (India) and many other Ecodharma mentors and friends. She lives with her husband Imtiaz Rangwala, also a climate scientist, in Boulder. Her more-than-human family includes two Zebra finches, two German Shepherds, Flatirons range and Indian peaks in Colorado and Aravalli range in India.
