Grad School Welcomes Director of Alumni Continuing Education

From the Himalayan state of Bhutan, Lham joins the Graduate School staff as Director of Alumni Continuing Education. A 2009 graduate of the Master's program, she will work with the alumni and their communities, a vital part of Future Generations global network of partners, to promote their continued success and life-long education. Working with the Dean, Lham will foster relations between prospective students and Future Generations increasing number of alumni.

Dean Mike Rechlin states, “We look forward to Lham bringing together our worldwide alumni body into a force to extend the lessons learned from their graduate education.  This is an important position toward realizing our institutional vision of 100 nodes of change throughout the world.”  

She last served as the research coordinator for the Royal Society for the Protection of Nature in Bhutan, where she led and engaged her community to promote nature conservation and build local knowledge and capacity for economic and ecological sustainability. An economist by training, Lham brings a decade of hands-on experience in conservation and global development. She expresses, “I look forward with this opportunity to work with a team of people in the Graduate School who understands community development from different perspectives and harness their expertise. I’m excited about the challenge of understanding the contexts of the communities that our alumni serve throughout 19 different countries.”

In her Master’s Degree practicum (thesis), Lham researched the social and ecological factors resulting in the depletion of ringshoo bamboo (neomicrocalamus andropogonifolius). A popular plant for making handicrafts, ringshoo has declined in such villages as Lham’s community in Kangpara, where the finest bamboo crafts in all of Bhutan are crafted. Lham worked with communities to reduce the overharvesting of these rare species to protect their forests and local livelihoods as well.

Lham also enjoys portraying the nature she works so ardently to protect through photographs. A passionate nature photographer, she recently published the book “Colours, a collection of wildflowers of Bhutan.”