Usha R. Balakrishnan
Founder, CEO, and Board Chair at CARTHA
- Role
- Founder, CEO, and Board Chair at Basqo
- Location
- Iowa City, IA, US
- LinkedIn followers
- 500 followers
About Usha R. Balakrishnan
Seasoned, personable professional whose versatile background of accomplishments rest on managerial diligence, creativity, global contact networks, as well as exceptional skills in relationship-building, public speaking, and business development. Building academic-practitioner collaborations is my forte. Over three decades, I have continued to enjoy meeting with, learning from, and working with intergenerational teams of scientists, physicians, lawyers, artists, writers, and managers. As my professional work demonstrably reflects, I am dedicated to cultivating new and non-traditional approaches to partnership development and stewardship practices that can spur the next generation of interdisciplinary research, innovation translation networks, collaborative philanthropy, and community development. My experience with innovators in multiple regions of the world, across dozens of professions and age-groups uniquely qualifies me to assist as a strategic advisor for incubative projects with expansive visions. Contact me if I can help you as a consultant on your project.\"Daring with Humility\" and \"Pre-Pairing Minds to Create Chance\" are my self-coined mottos. My nonprofit work with CARTHA continues to be a mutually-empowering \"way of life\" with Collaborative Doers for Humanity.always filled with serendipity, synchronicity, kindness, warmth, and meaning! May you have a wonderful day!
Experience
Founder, CEO, and Board Chair
Sep 2006 — Present · Iowa City, IA, US
CARTHA is a US 501c3 public charity with the mission of Cultivating Collaborative Doers for Humanity.(CARTHA, meaning doer in Sanskrit, is an acronym for Collaborative Arts in Research Translation for Human Advancement). We design program incubation partnerships and philanthropic approaches to bridge high-aspiration innovators across disciplines, sectors, regions, and ages. Speaking engagements, guest lectures, and sheer word-of-mouth have robustly kept attracting new volunteers and well-wishers to CARTHA. With our all-volunteer Board and intergenerational team of scientists, physicians, artists, writers, students, and public citizens, we organize Glocalizers and Fellowships in Social Innovation, Fusion Philanthropy, and Healthfulness. Our selected CARTHA Fellows receive non-traditional mentoring, financial support, and/or access to broader networks that keep them inspired in their pursuits.Our early years were focused on dialogues around health technology innovations in global health realms. We then supported an award-winning Study Abroad Program by organizing networking seminars and providing for travel stipends for student participants. Our recent Glocalizer dialogues have been around a wide range of topics such as using music and poetry to address unresolved grief; coping skills required to deal with loneliness, including during end-of-life phases; or the need to integrate mental health counseling into entrepreneurship programs, etc.Current community collaborative initiatives are the Iowa Corridor Sangeet Partnership launched in 2017 to encourage the multilingual musical sharing of childhood memories with South Asian performing artists, including Bollywood singers and well-known instrumentalists. Another program, Musicality in Parks is now poised to expand beyond the first pilot in Iowa City.
Education
Frank Anthony Public School
Elementary School in New Delhi, India
1968 — 1974
University of Iowa - Henry B. Tippie College of Business
Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.)
1987 — 1988
Bombay University
BCom
1980 — 1985
SIES High School
High School in Mumbai, India
1974 — 1980
Skills
- Fundraising
- Strategic Communications
- Workshop Facilitation
- Project Planning
- Grant Writing
- Nonprofits
- Entrepreneurship
- Community Development
- Healthcare
- Management
- Philanthropy
- Program Development
- Event Planning
- Sustainability
- Entrepreneur
- Business Development
- Economic Development
- Non-Profits
- Higher Education
- Leadership Development
- Policy
- Leadership
- Social Entrepreneurship
- Grants
- Public Speaking
- Government
- Strategic Planning
- Strategic Consulting
- International Relations
- Community Outreach
- Project Management
- Strategy
- Volunteer Management
- Research
- Public Relations
- Program Management
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