Dr. Malavika Chauhan works as an independent Advisor and Consultant in the space of Rural Himalayan Livelihoods, Development, Sustainability, Ecosystem management and Organizational development.

She did her PhD in Limnology from JNU, New Delhi, India, and worked with WWF-India, Wetlands International - South Asia, the Institute for Economic Growth, Delhi, amongst others in her early career period. Dr. Chauhan has been a Global Environmental Facility Fellow at East Anglia University, U.K., and a Fulbright Scholar with the USGS-NWRC at Lafayette, Louisiana, USA. During a consulting phase, she worked with the WB, ADB, WWF – International, and various private and public agencies. To her credit are several academic publications in the field of ecology and development.

In early 2023, Dr. Chauhan retired as the Deputy Director, Program Design, from the Tata Trusts, one of the oldest philanthropic bodies in India. She had also been heading its Rural Development and Civil Society portfolios since 2017. Before this Malavika had worked to build an organization which works on issues of rural development in the Indian Central and Western Himalayas, the Himmotthan Society, as its Executive Director. The organization now has one of the largest programmatic spreads, implementing in over 1000 villages, in the upper Himalayan region.

Dr. Chauhan has also led extensive work in post disaster relief and livelihood regeneration programmes in the region, including in Uttarakhand, Nepal and Jammu and Kashmir. She is based out of Dehradun, in the foothills of the Himalayas, and continues to maintain academic and cultural interests apart from the development work she is involved in.