Meet Dr. Sailesh Rao | Founder and Executive Director

We had the good fortune of connecting with Dr. Sailesh Rao and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Dr. Sailesh, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
I worked on the internet communications infrastructure for 20 years after graduation. Then, in Dec 2005, I came home from work, turned on the TV and there was Vice President Al Gore talking about climate change. I was so shocked by what he said that I decided to look into it and within 3 months, I realized that our ecological predicament was much worse than what he was saying. That’s when I closed down my internet business and wrote to Mr. Gore asking how I can help him. I spent the next two years giving his slide show to audiences and then decided to start my own non-profit, Climate Healers in Dec 2007, dedicated towards healing the Earth’s climate.

What should our readers know about your business?
Most Non-Governmental Organizations working on climate change tend to focus on reducing the use of fossil fuels and switching the human economy over to clean energy. Climate Healers is unique in that we focus on a holistic solution to climate change which requires addressing not just our ecological predicament of which climate change is just a symptom, but also all our social justice issues simultaneously. Sustainability is fundamentally about our relationship with each other and with nature and at its root, it is about ethics and morality. Justice is sustainable. Injustice is not. Truth is sustainable. Lies are not. Therefore, our quest for sustainability is truly our quest for moral singularity and it requires a complete reorganization of our industrial society to enable that quest to occur. At Climate Healers, our Philosophy is based on four principles:

1. All life is one family. Our family includes all humans, animals, birds, fishes and insects.
2. We don’t hurt members of our family, but treat them with kindness and compassion.
3. Speciesism, colonialism, racism, ableism and patriarchy are built into the money game that we are playing. This game promotes selfishness, greed and apathy, the three main environmental problems identified by Gus Speth.
4. We cannot heal our world and achieve true equality with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all members of our family without transforming our money game into a more serious one that has equality built-in by design and promotes selflessness, generosity and activism.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I would take them to see Singh Farms and experience the greenery that is possible in the Phoenix valley if we all put our minds to it. Then, I would take them to 24 Carrots or Seed Shack or any of the other excellent Vegan restaurants in the Phoenix valley. Phoenix boasts over 30 Vegan restaurants with a wide variety of cuisines represented.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Perhaps the most important person to influence my career choices was my thesis advisor at Stanford University, Prof. Thomas Kailath. When I finished my Ph. D., I went to him and said, “I feel like I know everything about nothing. I took a problem and beat it to death. Is this what a Ph. D. is all about?” He replied, “No, that’s not why I gave you a Ph. D. I gave you a Ph. D. because I think you have the ability to take any problem in any field and make a credible contribution to solving it.”

That one statement has helped me throughout the rest of my life. It gave me the confidence to switch careers and do what I do today.

Website: https://www.climatehealers.org

Instagram: VeganWorld2026

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sailesh-rao-%F0%9F%85%A5-0452011/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/saileshrao

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/climatehealers

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC83z_FQ6x2mW_pZYjxTBQbQ/featured