Dr. Shashi Gogate
DR. SHASHI GOGATE was born and raised in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. She attended medical school with the support and encouragement of her parents, earning an MBBS from M. Gandhi Medical College in her hometown. After marrying and having her first child, she moved with her husband to the United States, where she continued her medical education and earned a Masters in Pathology at the Ohio State University Hospitals.
While raising three children with her husband, she became Board Certified in Anatomic Pathology and Clinical Laboratories, and served for three years as an Assistant Professor in Pathology at the Ohio State University Hospitals. In 1975, she joined Fairfield Medical Center in Lancaster, Ohio, where she would practice in the field of pathology for the next thirty-five years as the center’s Director of Clinical Labs and Chief of Pathology. In 1996, she was elected President of the Medical Staff, and in 2009, she became Chair of the hospital’s Board of Directors.
In early 1970, after the birth of her third child, Dr. Gogate and her family began a new chapter of personal growth and spirituality through the practice of meditation. Over the years, her daily meditation practice gradually deepened her appreciation for and connection to her native homeland, and she increasingly felt spurred to reflect on the importance of self-discovery, self-sufficiency, and self-restoration for the realization of one’s potential—a development that ultimately inspired her interest in undertaking this book project.
She lives with her husband in Columbus, Ohio.
Mick Minard
MICK MINARD is a writer, photographer, and strategy consultant specializing in program design, marketing communications, and impact assessment. Over the past twenty years, her professional and artistic work has largely been focused on promoting promising ideas for restoring connection between human society and the natural world.
Her photographs have been exhibited in New York City and sold commercially, and she uses visual and written narrative to inspire new forms of leadership, organizational transformation, and community engagement.
Since 1998, Mick has worked in the United States, Europe, East Africa, and South Asia, with both non-profit and for-profit social ventures, and she has facilitated the growth of early-stage capacity-building and income-generating initiatives serving the underprivileged and the rural poor.
From 2009 - 2015, Mick led REEF Reports (Realizing the Ecosystem Effects of Finance™), a strategy consulting company she founded in response to the growth of impact investing which was unlocking significant sums of private investment capital to complement public resources and philanthropy in addressing pressing global challenges. REEF partnered with social enterprises, impact investors, foundations, academic institutions, and international development organizations (projects, teams, and networks) to design an “impact practice” to improve performance, attract capital, inform investment decisions, engage stakeholders, and influence policy.
Mick’s public speaking engagements in the U.S. and internationally have expanded awareness of the need for a sharper focus on the world’s women farmers. In 2012 and 2013, she was invited to present her research on the subject at the UN’s 56th and 57th Commissions on the Status of Women. In 2014, she was appointed Representative to the United Nations to advocate for the empowerment of women and girls through life-long education.
In 2015, Mick joined the REI Co-op and currently leads the company’s experience business, philanthropic strategy, public policy and advocacy initiatives, and local brand engagement and stewardship investments in Oregon. She is based in Portland.