Ben Soltoff '12 visits community partner

Former Hart Fellow Ben Soltoff, Trinity ’12, recently wrote about visiting the community partner he worked with during his 2012-2013 fellowship.

On a trip to Jodhpur, India earlier this Spring, Soltoff checked in with GRAVIS (Gramin Vikas Vigyan Samiti), an organization that works to improve the quality of life of people residing in several rural areas of India.

Soltoff’s research project analyzed the impact of climate change on India’s Thar Desert and its effects on the people who live there. He found that the Thar was “expected to get hotter in the coming decades, with more variable rainfall, and that these changes would exacerbate existing environmental problems of water scarcity and crop failure.” The organization runs multiple programs in the environmentally-sensitive region.

Since returning to the United States from his Hart Fellowship, Soltoff worked with the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank, and is completing a joint MBA-MEM program at Yale this Spring.

“In many ways, my personal journey has paralleled that of the organization,” Soltoff wrote. “Like GRAVIS, I have applied lessons from the Thar to broader global efforts, and I have seen promising potential in the world of business.”

Read Soltoff’s reflection posted on GRAVIS’ blog here.

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