Meet the Team

Helping us all build a better future for India’s wild tigers has needed a jungleful of drive, a mountainful of clever thinking, and couple-of-jeep’s-worth of amazing technology. But it takes a little dash of tiger blood to get the fur-ball rolling – and these are some of the alchemists:

	Amit Sankhala Dynastic pressure sits easy on his young shoulders, as his grandfather helped found India’s tiger reserves back in I973. An inveterate traveller (he doesn’t yet have kids), a passionate wildlifer, lodge owner and our very own wonderboy, he ably speaks for Tiger Nation.
	Julian Matthews Swapping Africa’s Big Five for Indian Big Seven, our very own Indiana Jones of the safari world has avoided a proper job for over twenty years. Running his own nature travel business and operating a tiger charity, his pragmatic mantra of ‘if wilderness doesn’t pay, it won’t stay’ fuels an unquenchable passion to secure a sustainable future for wildlife in an overcrowded land. Tiger Nation is his fault.
	Hashim Tyabji He may be quite old and short, but Hashim packs a punch bag of talent as a naturalist, birder, writer, traveller – and even honorary wildlife warden. In between running his own wildlife lodge, he’s made a number of films, and co-wrote the book for the BBC’s Spy in the Jungle, narrated by David Attenborough and filmed by elephant ‘trunk-cams’.
	Dr Raghu Chundawat Tiger Nation’s professorial brain spent a glorious youth stalking snow leopards in the Himalayas, before spending a decade restoring tigers in Panna; a process immortalised in the BBC’s Tigers of the Emerald Forest. A hands-on conservation biologist and outspoken wildlife advocate, he brings the scientific process to our passion. Now that Tiger Nation can identify tigers automatically, he can finally retire his jeweller’s eyepiece and take up golf.
	Richard Dikstra Silver-of-hair and sound-of judgement, Richard’s superb business acumen keeps Tiger Nation on-track while the rest of us get distracted by rustles in the undergrowth. He’s been involved in more media businesses, technologies, and travels than we can remember (including that Maxwell one), and has been pursuing wildlife across the globe since before some of us were born. We won’t mention that it took five years of travelling across India for him to see his first wild tiger.
	Ross Burridge Thank heavens for someone who understands all the technological stuff, and can write, take photos and publish online things… he even claims that Ruby on Rails isn’t a train set. Running his own media company on the side, he’s just as likely to be found up a tree with a camera as behind a keyboard, and is principally charged with platform-agnostic brand aggregation strategies. And making tea.
	Kay and Satyendra Tiwari For twenty years Kay (from Worcestershire) and Satyendra (not from Worcestershire) have been lucky enough to live on the borders of Bandhavgrah Tiger Reserve, studying and photographing tigers – as well as Satyendra’s beloved butterflies. Keeping painstaking wildlife records (how they know who fathered which cubs remains a mystery), and battling the many good fights their passion demands, they’ve become a vital part of track and identify the local tiger population.
	Aditya Singh Lodge-owner and photographer extraordinaire, Aditya ‘Dicky’ Singh is a one-stop shop for information on the Ranthambhore National Park. Spending months at a time visiting the lakes and scrubby hillsides of the park, he knows the terrain like the back of his hand – which is usually to be found clasping a number of cameras at once. Chances are you’ve seen one of his stunning images before, and we’re delighted to have his shutter-finger poised for Tiger Nation.
	Ralf Holmstrom An inveterate traveller, Ralf sacrificed the joys of a legal profession to run an expedition cruising company called Polar Quest out of Sweden. Under his managerial talents it blossomed together with his passion and belief in environmentally friendly ways to travel and learn.
	Aaron Mason and Georgios Michalakidis The mind numbing complexity of our Web platform called for the finest techie brains we could muster. Budding pair, Aaron and Georgios, provide this in shed loads and turned a mad idea into stunning reality - and learnt a lot about the algorithms of tiger stripes too! Enjoy Tiger Nation!