NDPT's Kalon Tripa (Prime Minister) Candidate and Their Profile

Dr. Lobsang Sangay, LL.M., S.J.D. is presently a Senior Fellow at the East Asian Legal Studies Program, Harvard Law School. After graduating from Tibetan Refugee school in Darjeeling, he received his BA (Honors), and LLB from Delhi University, India, in 1995, and won a Fulbright scholarship to Harvard Law School where he received his LLM. In 2004, he became the first Tibetan (among six million) to earn a doctorate degree from Harvard Law School, and was a recipient of the 2004 Yong K. Kim 95 Prize of Excellence for his dissertation "Democracy in Distress: Is Exile Polity a Remedy? A Case Study of Tibet's Government-in-exile." In 2006, he was selected as one of the twenty-four Young Leaders of Asia by the Asia Society, a global organization working to strengthen relationships and promote understanding among the people, leaders, and institutions of Asia and the United States.

In India, he was elected the youngest national executive member ever of the Tibetan Youth Congress (CENTREX), the largest NGO among Tibetans in exile. For the last thirteen years, in his Track II initiative work, Dr. Sangay has organized six unprecedented conferences between Chinese and Tibetan scholars at Harvard University, including a rare meeting between HH the Dalai Lama and thirty-five mainland Chinese scholars in 2003. Prominent scholars on Tibet from Beijing, Lhasa, Dharamsala, Europe and the US have participated. The latest conference titled "Autonomy in Tibet" was held on November 27-28, 2007.

He has given numerous talks on the Sino-Tibet conflict and exile Tibetan issues in various institutes and venues around the world. He has been consulted by the news media, including the BBC, Time, South China Morning Post, Washington Post, Far Eastern Economic Review, and the Boston Globe, and has published articles about the Tibetan issue in the Harvard Asia Quarterly and Journal of Democracy.

Tenzin N. Tethong is Distinguished Fellow, Tibetan Studies Initiative, at Stanford University. He teaches in the History Department and the Continuing Studies Program, and is an Executive Committee member of CCARE (Center for Compassion & Altruism Research and Education), an initiative of the Stanford School of Medicine within the Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neurosciences.

Mr. Tethong is a former Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in New York (1973-1986) and Special Representative of His Holiness in Washington, D.C. (1987-1990). He began his work in the exile Tibetan community as a part-time teacher/student at the first Tibetan refugee school in Mussoorie in 1960. In 1967 he joined the Education Office of the Tibetan government in exile as a secretary and translator.

In 1968 he teamed up with his brother Tenzin Geyche and a friend Sonam Topgyal, to start Sheja Magazine, an educational publication, one of the first Tibetan non-governmental initiatives in India. Two years later, as one of four conveners of the first Tibetan Youth Conference, which resulted in the formation of the Tibetan Youth Congress, he served in its first leadership executive committee. During this period he also served as Editor of Tibetan Review succeeding Tendzin N. Takla when the paper moved from Darjeeling to Dharmsala.

During his tenure in New York he established The Tibet Fund and Potala Publications as part of the Office of Tibet, and played a key role in the formation of several Tibetan initiatives in the U.S. and Canada among which are the U.S. Tibet Committee, the Tibetan Association of New York and New Jersey, and Tibet House – New York.

In 1980 he headed the Second Delegation of Tibetan exiles sent by the Tibetan government to tour Tibet and China. When he was transferred as Special Representative of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Washington, D.C. he established the International Campaign for Tibet which helped secure greater understanding and support for Tibet, including U.S. refugee assistance, radio programs, scholarships, and immigration opportunities for 1,000 Tibetans to the United States.

In 1990 he was one of the first Kalons elected – one of three – by a special Congress of Tibetan exiles in Dharmsala, and served in various portfolios which include Finance, Home, International Relations, and as Kalon Tripa, serving for five years in Dharmsala.

In 1995 he moved to California where, among his many activities, he was advisor to "Seven Years in Tibet", and joined the board of the Committee of 100 for Tibet. He is one of the founding members and current President of The Dalai Lama Foundation, an international organization dedicated to the promotion of peace and ethics. He also serves in an advisory capacity for the local Tibetan Community Center project, and recently launched "Tibet in Exile — Fifty Years", an online documentation effort to commemorate the last fifty years in exile of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people.

NDPT 2011 Campaign