Dharani USA, Inc. [established, 2000] is a sister organization to The Dharani Trust [India]. Dharani USA, Inc.‘s mission and objectives are the same as those of The Dharani Trust.

Dharani USA, Inc. has been set up to be the legal entity in the U.S.A. to raise support for the work of The Dharani Trust’s work in India.

Dharani USA, Inc. is a 501(c) charitable organization under U.S. Income Tax rules and contributions to it are tax-deductible. Please contact us to make a contribution.

Board of Trustees, Dharani USA, Inc.:

	Dr. Chandra Shekhar Balachandran, Geographer, Bangalore. Founding Trustee & President. Dr. Balachandran is a geographer with over 25 years of cumulative teaching experience in the U.S.A. and India, ranging from K-12 to post-graduate geography education. He has worked extensively with K-12 geography teachers in the U.S.A. and India. He is currently based in Bangalore. He is actively promoting innovative geography education in the K-12 levels by active engagement with teachers and students in different syllabi in Kannada and English. He spearheads the GeoVidyaa Geography Centre of Excellence, a partnership with Army Public School, Bangalore. He can be contacted at balachandran at tiigs dot org.
	Dr. Heidi J. Nast, Professor of International Studies, DePaul University.  Managing Trustee. Dr. Nast is Professor of International Studies at DePaul University in Chicago. Trained as a cultural geographer at McGill University (Montreal, Canada), she has studied how the spatial organization of everyday life (or spatiality) shapes how power is distributed and carried. Her work is historically and empirically varied and she has published widely. She has researched and written on female seclusion in historical African kingdoms and emirates, racial segregation in the US and globally—today and in the past, and the way that colonialism continues to organize itself through different governmental regimes, globally (see). Between2002-2010, she served Dharani as an Advisory Board member, running the Chicago marathan in 2004 on Dharani’s behalf. In 2010, she became the Managing Trustee of Dharani, USA, Inc. In her words, she is committed to Dharani’s mission to make geography relevant and to Dharani’s belief that in order for geography to matter, it must become a central tool of everyday thinking. In this sense, Dharani makes plain geography’s mission and potential influence, everywhere.
	Dr. Sanjukta Mukherjee, Assistant Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, DePaul University. Trustee. Dr. Mukherjee is currently Assistant Professor at DePaul University’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program in Chicago.  Originally from Kolkata, Dr. Mukherjee received her BA (Geography) from Calcutta University,  her MA (Geography) from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and (following her move to the US in 2001) her PhD (Geography) from Syracuse University, New York. Dr. Mukherjee’s research and teaching focuses on urban, economic and feminist geographies. She is particularly interested in how globalization of the IT industry has shaped urban labor markets and local identities and how the inequalities that globalization have produced have manifested along gender, class, race and caste lines in India and amongst South Asian diaspora abroad. From 2007-09, Dr. Mukherjee was a postdoctoral fellow at the Munk Center for International Studies, and from 2009-10 she was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Geography and Program in Planning at the University of Toronto.
	Dr. Carolyn V. Prorok, Retired Professor of Geography, Slippery Rock University. TrusteeDr. Prorok is a retired professor of geography who has thirty years of experience in the field of geography education.  She first taught geography at a public secondary school before earning her Ph.D. at LSU and professorship at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania–USA.  Her research has focused on cultural geographies of southern Asia and the Caribbean, sacred places, the Hindu diaspora, feminist geographies, and geography education.  In 1998 she co-edited Asian Women and Their Work: A Geography of Gender & Development, for the National Council for Geographic Education  with Kiran B. Chhokar, who is the director for higher education programmes at the Centre for Environmental Education here in India.  C.V. Prorok is currently working on projects concerning the Indian communities of Trinidad and a survey of family temples in the Hindu community of Réunion island.
	Dr. Surinder M. Bhardwaj, Emeritus Professor of Geography, Kent State University. Honorary Trustee. Dr. Bhardwaj is emeritus professor of Geography, Kent State University, Kent, OH (USA). He specializes in the geographies of religions and belief systems. In a career spanning nearly four decades, he has mentored a large number of graduate and undergraduate students to become professional geographers. He is one of the two geography educators who inspired the establishment of The Dharani Trust, Dharani USA, Inc., and The Indian Institute of Geographical Studies.