Brahm
Founder, Himalayan Consensus Institute
2017 Speaker

China & Nepal

Laurence Brahm, international crisis mediation lawyer and developmental economist, is founder of the Himalayan Consensus Institute dedicated to multilateral dialogue on climate change and community resilience. He founded the hotel group Shambhala Serai, featured in Forbes Magazine and recognized as exemplifying successful social entrepreneurship at the 2016 Vatican Impact Investing Conference. In 2015 Iceland’s President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson invited Brahm to serve on the Himalayan-Third Pole Circle, a panel forming policy responses to anthropogenic climate-induced glacial melt. From 2013 to 2015, he served as senior advisor to China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, receiving China’s 2016 Social Responsibility Award for drafting their national policy for renewable energy. In 2015 he was advisor to Bhutan’s National Environmental Commission. In 2012, as NGO spokesperson to the United Nations Earth Summit 2012 (Rio+20), he was named one of “100 Opinion Leaders Advising Rio+20.” In 2010, Brahm received the UN Development Programme award for Biodiversity and Cultural Protection in China. In 2009, China Central Television selected him as the only foreigner among ten individuals contributing to China’s two decades of economic reforms. As explorer, he led three expeditions searching for the mythical kingdom Shangri-la, for which he was elected a Fellow International of the Explorers Club of New York City in 2015, and received the National Geographic Air and Water Conservation Fund award in 2016. The records of each expedition—Searching for Shangri-la, Conversations with Sacred Mountains, and Shambhala Sutra—have been published as his Himalayan Trilogy.