SINI's Founding Executive Director, Tsering Palmo Gellek, was born in Berkeley, California in 1973. Since 2001, Tsering has engaged in Buddhist cultural preservation work throughout Asia. Tsering began construction on the Institute in 2007 and completed it in 2013. Like a lotus, SINI emerged from barren land near the site of the Buddha's first teachings. Rinpoche's pithy mission instruction to Tsering was to 'connect East and West' and build along the North-South Axis. To this day, Tsering nurtures the growth of a beautiful campus and designs innovative programs that harness the power of collaboration and transformation for monastics and laypeople.
Raised in a multicultural family and Buddhist community, she is the youngest daughter of French-Egyptian poet Nazli Nour and Tarthang Rinpoche. She earned a bachelor's degree in International Affairs from Lewis and Clark College (1995) and a Master's degree in Law from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (2000).
Her first major cultural preservation project involved installing eight large world peace bells at sacred Buddhist sites throughout India and Nepal: Sarnath, Kushinagar, Lumbini, Boudha, Tso Pema, Swayambhu, Rajgir, and Shravasti.
In 2008, Tsering was asked by her father to direct the restoration of the world's most ancient stupa, Swayambhu, Nepal. For the past fifteen hundred years, the Swayambhu Stupa has been renovated each century. Tsering was the first female director. She worked with over 70 traditional artists, Nepal's Department of Archaeology, numerous Buddhist priests and their communities, UNESCO, and other consultants. This historic and complex project is documented in the book Light of the Valley (Dharma Publishing) and an award-winning documentary of the same name.
