Professional Fellows Program

Saurav Dhakal is the co-founder of the innovative digital platform, “Story Cycle” that uses impact-based storytelling to share and promote the stories of underrepresented people, places, and products. Prior to this, he founded Green Growth in 2014, which was an online market for locally sourced products. In addition, he founded Our Dream Cities in 2016, a camp designed to enable youth in specific regions of Nepal to engage in urban development issues. Recently, Saurav began working on the INNOCO changemaker program with the lenses of well-being (self), inclusivity (society) and resourcefulness (nature) by igniting individual and collective capacities to service humanity.

Saurav is an alumnus of the Professional Fellows Program and was placed at Kent State University’s Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative. There, he closely observed the Making Our Own Space (MOOS) program, which aimed to empower youth with skills to creatively transform their neighborhood public spaces.

Saurav is a 2011 International British Council Climate Champion and the 2012 winner of the South Asian Climate Change Award (SACCA). He has also completed a three-month, 1,555-kilometer trek through some of the highest Himalayan passes in order to assess the impacts of climate change on the environment and on vulnerable populations.

Wayne Feiden currently works as the director of planning and sustainability for the City of Northampton, Massachusetts. His areas of focus include sustainability, resiliency, revitalization, open space, alternative transportation, and public health. As director, he led Northampton to earn the nation’s first 5-STAR community award for municipal sustainability. He is also a Lecturer of Practice in planning and sustainable communities at the University of Massachusetts, where he teaches classes in community economic development and planning and sustainability practice.

Wayne’s publications include “Conservation Limited Development,” “Building Sustainability and Resiliency into Local Planning Agencies” (APA PAS Memos), and Local Agency Planning Management and Assessing Sustainability (APA PAS Reports). Wayne’s Bellagio Residency (Italy), State Department Professional Fellowship Exchange (Malaysia), German Marshall Fund fellowship (United Kingdom and Denmark), Fulbright Specialist fellowships (South Africa and New Zealand), Eisenhower Fellowship (Hungary) all focused on revitalization and sustainability. Wayne’s work has included projects throughout the United States, in the Eastern Caribbean, Ireland, Brazil, and Sierra Leone.