Shadananda Municipality-8,Tungechha Dingla Bhojpur
Pitambar Shrestha has over 30 years of professional experience in agriculture, biodiversity, and natural resources management. He started his career as a front-line staff, gaining valuable field experience. Later, he transitioned into management roles at LI-BIRD, including serving as a Program Operations Director. Although his primary focus is Nepal and South Asia, he also worked for a year with a Norwegian NGO, the Development Fund, based in Oslo.
Pitambar has been extensively involved in designing and implementing agricultural biodiversity management programs. He has conducted numerous national and international trainings on participatory approaches to agricultural biodiversity management, including community seed banks and participatory plant breeding. Additionally, he has shared his experiences in several national and international workshops, seminars, and symposiums.
Pitambar represented civil society organizations for the first two years and then Nepal in the Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Farmers’ Rights (AHTEG-FR) within the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), FAO, from 2018 to 2021. From 2024 to 2025, he represents Community Seed Bank Nepal.
Birgunj Metrocity-13,Shreepur, Parsa
Shashi Bhushan Pradhan holds a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) from Tribhuvan University (T.U.) and currently serves as the co-founder and director at LINKS Consulting Pvt. Ltd. (LCPL). He has accumulated over 25 years of extensive work experience, particularly in financial management, office administration, human resource management, internal control systems, and general organization management, with 15 years of service including serving as a Admin and Finance Director at LI-BIRD, a prominent non-profit organization specialized in agriculture, biodiversity, and natural resource management.
Additionally, Shashi provides financial advisory services to private companies such as Anamolbiu Pvt. Ltd., and Annapaat Agro Pvt. Ltd. His expertise also extends to managing project-implementing partners, NGOs, and private companies, developing and overseeing training programs in financial management and business plan development aspects for partner organizations and cooperatives. He has also served as a member in various research and studies.
Furthermore, Shashi possesses substantial experience in auditing including statutory and internal audits, tax, and VAT audits in private and public companies, industries, and non-government sectors.
Shadananda Municipality 8, Dingla, Bhojpur
Email: pitambar@csbnepal.org
Pitambar Shrestha has over 30 years of professional experience in agriculture, biodiversity, and natural resources management. He started his career as a front-line staff, gaining valuable field experience. Later, he transitioned into management roles at LI-BIRD, including serving as a Program Operations Director. Although his primary focus is Nepal and South Asia, he also worked for a year with a Norwegian NGO, the Development Fund, based in Oslo.
Pitambar has been extensively involved in designing and implementing agricultural biodiversity management programs. He has conducted numerous national and international trainings on participatory approaches to agricultural biodiversity management, including community seed banks and participatory plant breeding. Additionally, he has shared his experiences in several national and international workshops, seminars, and symposiums.
Pitambar represented civil society organizations for the first two years and then Nepal in the Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Farmers’ Rights (AHTEG-FR) within the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), FAO, from 2018 to 2021. From 2024 to 2025, he represents Community Seed Bank Nepal.
Birgunj Metorcity 13, Shreepur, Parsa
Email: shashi@csbnepal.org
Lawrence, Kansas, USA
Email: ssthapit@gmail.com
Sajal Sthapit has a PhD in plant pathology and wheat genetics and a M.S. in sustainable development and conservation biology. He is experienced in developing and implementing research and development grants on community-based biodiversity management, integrated watershed management, and neglected and underutilized species by engaging multiple national and international partner organizations. Through these grants, he has helped establish and strengthen community seed banks in Nepal and South Asia. He is committed to the cause of agrobiodiversity conservation and sees community seed banks as a crucial venue for it. He has worked for LI-BIRD in Nepal and EcoAgriculture Partners and the Land Institute in the United States.
Email: r.vernooy@cgiar.org
Ronnie Vernooy, a Dutch national, has worked on questions related to the conservation and sustainable use of agricultural biodiversity for 35 years in countries around the world (e.g., Bhutan, China, Cuba, Kenya, Mongolia, Nepal, Nicaragua, South Africa, Uganda, Vietnam). He has expertise in participatory action research and training, including social and gender analysis, policy analysis, and monitoring and evaluation. He has written and edited, jointly with research partners, briefs, papers, articles, book-chapters and books in Chinese, English, French, Mongolian and Spanish. His work, since 2011 at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, focuses on the policy and legal aspects of the safeguarding and sustainable use of plant genetic resources, both ex situ and in situ, from local to international levels. One topic of particular interest is community seed banks (as a form of collective action) and their roles in providing voice and choice to farmers to keep local crop diversity and associated knowledge in own hands and alive.
Shadananda Municipality-8,Tungechha Dingla Bhojpur
Pitambar Shrestha has over 30 years of professional experience in agriculture, biodiversity, and natural resources management. He started his career as a front-line staff, gaining valuable field experience. Later, he transitioned into management roles at LI-BIRD, including serving as a Program Operations Director. Although his primary focus is Nepal and South Asia, he also worked for a year with a Norwegian NGO, the Development Fund, based in Oslo.
Pitambar has been extensively involved in designing and implementing agricultural biodiversity management programs. He has conducted numerous national and international trainings on participatory approaches to agricultural biodiversity management, including community seed banks and participatory plant breeding. Additionally, he has shared his experiences in several national and international workshops, seminars, and symposiums.
Pitambar represented civil society organizations for the first two years and then Nepal in the Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Farmers’ Rights (AHTEG-FR) within the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), FAO, from 2018 to 2021. From 2024 to 2025, he represents Community Seed Bank Nepal.
Shadananda Municipality-8,Tungechha Dingla Bhojpur
Shashi Bhushan Pradhan holds a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) from Tribhuvan University (T.U.) and currently serves as the co-founder and director at LINKS Consulting Pvt. Ltd. (LCPL). He has accumulated over 25 years of extensive work experience, particularly in financial management, office administration, human resource management, internal control systems, and general organization management, with 15 years of service including serving as a Admin and Finance Director at LI-BIRD, a prominent non-profit organization specialized in agriculture, biodiversity, and natural resource management.
Additionally, Shashi provides financial advisory services to private companies such as Anamolbiu Pvt. Ltd., and Annapaat Agro Pvt. Ltd.
His expertise also extends to managing project-implementing partners, NGOs, and private companies, developing and overseeing training programs in financial management and business plan development aspects for partner organizations and cooperatives. He has also served as a member in various research and studies.
Furthermore, Shashi possesses substantial experience in auditing including statutory and internal audits, tax, and VAT audits in private and public companies, industries, and non-government sectors.
