ABOUT
BIO
Kritee (Kanko), Ph.D., is an internationally acclaimed spiritual coach, Zen Buddhist priest, climate scientist, meditation teacher, grief-rage ceremony leader, love-justice writer. She is the founding guiding teacher of Boundless in Motion and a cofounder of Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center. For 12 years, before fully committing herself to these two nonprofit organizations, she served as a Director and Senior Scientist in the Climate Smart Agriculture program at Environmental Defense Fund. She writes at the crossroads of multiple disciplines, for students, seekers, and stubborn optimists. Her articles, interviews and peer-reviewed manuscripts have appeared in many mainstream, academic, contemplative and international outlets including the New York Times, BBC, Washington Post, Harvard Health, Yale Climate Connections, California Public Radio, Tricycle, Lion’s Roar, Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, Environmental Science and Technology, The Independent, The Hindu and India Today.
Kritee believes that in this era of global polycrisis, our collective survival, and movement building depend on healing, belonging and “Reindigenizing”. For the past three years, she has been developing Re-Indigenizing as a multifaceted framework rooted in healing trauma through meditation, ecodharma practices and ceremonies that embrace animism, and on using science and strategies rooted in Nonviolence. She has been invited to bring her unique and loving approach to the climate crisis, racial justice, trauma healing and spirituality to retreats and workshops by organizations including One Earth Sangha, Al Gore’s Climate Reality, 350.org, Stanford University, World Council of Churches, San Francisco Zen Center, Mind & Life Institute and Lama Foundation.
From leading meditation intensives (called sesshin in Zen tradition) to conducting workshops at the intersection of trauma healing and collective action, Kritee extends her welcoming embrace to people of all backgrounds. Her experience is that spiritual healing and releasing our personal and ecological grief in the presence of a loving community is necessary, this helps us unlock our gifts and serve our communities in a more radical way. Her inclusive and warm approach is reflected in her work with young adults, black, Indigenous and other people of color, womxn, faith leaders, and those navigating the delicate interplay of different aspects of our ongoing polycrisis.
Kritee led a contemplative retreat with a focus on climate trauma and re-indigenizing for trauma researchers across the world at Mind and Life’s Summer Research Institute.
Background and lineages
Childhood and Family
Kritee was born in North India into a Hindu-Jain family — a household where symbols of many religions sat side by side on the same shelf, and where formal religiosity was quietly discouraged.
Her mother was a single, working-class woman who somehow held everything together. She was supported by aunties, neighbors, women in the community who showed up when it mattered. Kritee is, in the most literal sense, a product of a village. The idea that healing and survival happen collectively — not through individual willpower alone — is not a philosophy she arrived at through books. It is the water she was raised in.
Her maternal grandfather, Mool Chand Jain, was known in Gandhi of Haryana as a freedom fighter, a visionary parliamentarian and lawyer whose life was an embodiment of Nonviolence. Gandhi's photograph had the quality of a saint's image in Kritee’s home (more about her misgivings about Gandhi later).
Kritee has been chronically ill since childhood. Her body has been her most persistent teacher. A lot of what she understands about patience, about the near enemies of spiritual practice, about the gap between beautiful teachings and lived reality — she learned from years of navigating a body that would not always cooperate with her ambitions.
Spiritual lineages
Kritee has been shaped by many spiritual lineages within the larger tradition of Buddhism. Not everything she carries has Buddhist roots: she has learned from Indigenous leaders, from grief workers, from somatic healers, from scientists, from political organizers. But what she has found, over decades of practice and teaching, is that Buddhism — understood in its full, messy, diverse historical breadth — offers the most spacious container for holding all of her spiritual “tree” together. Not as a dogma but as a family of living questions. So here an exploration of her multiple Buddhist lineages along with their shadows.
Science and academic lineages
Academically, Kritee was trained at the Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi, India) before arriving in the U.S. in 2001 to do graduate research in Earth and Climate Sciences at Rutgers and Princeton Universities. She has close to twenty-five years of cross-disciplinary research experience in several areas related to the climate crisis, food and water security as well biochemistry, microbiology and geosciences. See her CV for more details.
Gratitude
Modernity expects us to highlight and celebrate individuals but we might be most alive and effective when we see ourselves as part of ongoing lineages, groups, teams, collaborations and cooperatives. We might feel most supported when we have friends and elders who guide us, celebrate us and keep us accountable to our deepest values and aspirations. The humans, lineages, lands, institutions and communities that Kritee derives her love and power from and devotes her energy to are: Boundless in Motion, Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center, Cold Mountain Zen, Fierce Vulnerability Network, Mool Chand Jain, Beth Garrigus, Claire Wings, One Yagna (India) and many other Ecodharma mentors and friends. She lives with her husband Imtiaz Rangwala, also a climate scientist, in Boulder. Her more-than-human family includes two Zebra finches, two German Shepherds, Flatirons range and Indian peaks in Colorado and Aravalli range in India.
In a world where science and spirituality converge, Kritee invites you to join a journey of self-discovery and connection—one that embraces the more-than-human realms with a sense of awe and wonder.
— To receive one on one spiritual mentorship from Kritee, please click here.
— To join our residential retreats led by her, please see our upcoming events.
— To join our drop in groups, please see our weekly and fortnightly events here.
— Kritee no longer accepts invites to do short 1-2 hour talks or podcasts. To invite Kritee for a daylong workshop or multi-day retreat, please click here.
