Our Team
Board of Directors
Pongkhi Bujorbarua, Ph.D.
Founder and President, Board of Directors
Dr. Pongkhi Bujorbarua has a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Washington, Seattle. For her doctoral dissertation* she worked with the Iraqi refugee community exploring how the expressive arts could contribute to the well-being of young refugee children. She founded Sanchayan, driven and inspired by the lives of the many children and their families she worked with closely during her fieldwork. The word ‘Sanchayan’ means a collection or storehouse and/or gathering (in Sanskrit). Pongkhi envisions this organization as a living collection and coming together of the powerful human stories of resilience, healing, and joy. She chose this name for the nonprofit to honor the memory of her late brother Sanchayan Bujorbarua.
Prior to her doctoral program, Pongkhi was the Research Manager at the Center for Global Innovation, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She has over 18 years of combined experience conducting research in academic and applied settings, within the U.S. and internationally (Publicis Advertising, Gurgaon, India and Quantum Consumer Solutions, New Delhi, India). Her core expertise is working with young children and families using qualitative methods and mixed-methods.
Pongkhi was born in India, in the northeastern state of Assam, known for its lush greenery, wildlife forests and tea plantations. She moved to the United States as a first generation immigrant nearly two decades ago.
Pongkhi works in the tech industry as a UX Researcher. She serves as an Advisor for The Red Door (TRD). Besides doing research, she enjoys dancing (trained in Indian classical, Salsa, Zouk), painting (oil, charcoal, pastel; digital art), writing poetry and DJing. She is now dipping her toes into music production.
*Bujorbarua, P. (2020). Expressions through movement and dance: exploring the mind-body connection and its implications on the well-being of young refugee children. University of Washington. [Proquest Dissertation Full Text]
Prof. Brinda Jegatheesan
Vice President, Board of Directors
Associate Professor, Learning Sciences & Human Development, University of Washington, Seattle
Dr. Jegatheesan addresses national and global issues in her research and teaching. In her areas of specialization, her interdisciplinary and multicultural scholarship draws on several traditional and cultural contexts and addresses issues of equity, access and inclusion on a local and global level, to engage in ongoing collective conversations with the goal of inspiring actions for change in learning and working environments, for both humans and animals.
Her areas of expertise: 1. Developmental Psychology, Learning Sciences & Human Development, Psychological Anthropology and Psychology and 2. Veterinary Medicine, Anthrozoology, Animal-Assisted Interventions, Health Sciences.
Dr. Jegatheesan's research and teaching centers on psychosocial-cultural and contextual factors in child development and learning. The population she works with are migrant children with neurobiological disabilities (autism) and other developmental disabilities, childhood post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) caused by family violence, war/postwar trauma, separation, loss and grief.
Dr. Jegatheesan research and professional development in this area is at the crossroads of human-animal bond and veterinary medicine and practice. She also focuses on One Health-One Welfare (OHOW) and public health, bioethics in Animal-assisted interventions and the unexamined links between children and animals and the role animals play in their psychological wellbeing.
Ari Dharminalan Rudenko
Member, Board of Directors
Ari Dharminalan Rudenko is an interdisciplinary choreographer, visual artist, and artistic director whose work is deeply invested in the interweaving of natural sciences, global traditional dance approaches, contemporary performance, and cross-cultural community building. Ari is the founder and artistic director of Prehistoric Body Theater, an experimental art-science performance company based in Central Java, Indonesia, dedicated to promoting global fascination with paleontology through the medium of dance-theater. The company is comprised of a core group of indigenous Indonesian dancers who live and work collectively with Ari to create live dance-theater performance, film, and residency programs which integrate traditional dance and cultural knowledge with the latest science. An international panel of mentor paleontologists assist the team in incorporating accurate, research-based knowledge of the science into every program.
Originally from the San Juan Islands in the US Pacific Northwest, Ari has been involved in Indonesia as a cultural researcher and generative collaborative artist since 2012. Ari developed his methodology through a Masters of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College and continues his academic pursuits in an ongoing Ph.D. program in Dance Creation Studies at the Art Institute of Indonesia Surakarta.
Ari's work has received recognition in the form of various awards and grants. Notable among these are the Bergstrom Award for Art-Science Interface in collaboration with the University of Washington and the North American Paleontological Society's 2023 Education and Outreach Grant. His research has been published in the Oxford University Press Integrative and Comparative Biology Journal, and he has presented his work at international platforms including TEDxUbud, the North American Paleontological Convention, and the International Society for the Performing Arts Congress.
Directed works under Prehistoric Body Theater include "Ghosts of Hell Creek," which has been staged in the United States and at festivals across Indonesia. The work has also been adapted into film as "Ghosts of Hell Creek: primitive streak" and is in preparation for international touring with the Indonesian dance ensemble. Another mainstage work, "A Song for Sangiran 17," premiered at the 2022 Indonesia Bertutur Festival at Borobudur Temple and has toured to several festivals in Indonesia.
Ari is an International Society for the Performing Arts Global Fellow and holds memberships in professional organizations such as the North American Paleontological Society and the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP).
Images: "Ghosts of Hell Creek: primitive streak"