Cultivating Collaborative Doers
Usha R. Balakrishnan
Founder, CEO, and Board Chair, CARTHA
President, CarthaGlobal™ Ventures LLC
Iowa City, Iowa, USA
Usha is a collaborative entrepreneur focused on humanity-centered incubation of innovations, partnerships, and business concepts. She defines “Socialization of Aspirations” as her life purpose drawing on her twin mottos: “Pre-Pairing Minds To Create Chance!” and “Aspire Before You Expire!”
Usha volunteers as CEO and Board Chair of CARTHA, a 501c3 nonprofit she founded in 2006. CARTHA ("doer" in Sanskrit) cultivates Collaborative Doers. These Carthans form a network of scientists, physicians, writers, artists, entrepreneurs, comedians, filmmakers, and public citizens. United by the shared aspirations of leveraging technological and social innovations to advance global good, these networks span five continents and three generations. These connections bridge the fields of Technology Transfer, Global Health, Sustainability, and Social Responsibility. CARTHA's programs spur innovative thought, community outreach, and cross-sector partnerships around themes such as Global Health through the Lens of Water; Birthing Invention-Historians; and Diaspora Givers. GlocalizerTM forums are organized to emphasize the social dimensions that influence and affect the human collaborative spirit indispensable for engaging in humanitarian endeavors. In 2011, CARTHA’s first student chapter was launched at the University of California-Berkeley.
Usha’s pursuits are shaped by her experiences as a grantee (2004-2006) of The Rockefeller Foundation, the Kauffman Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Usha also works with a team of consultants providing soft skills leadership and management training programs globally. After receiving a BCom from Bombay University and an MBA from the University of Iowa (UI), Usha worked at the UI for 15 years directing corporate partnerships and managing inventions and patent licensing functions. Her passionate vision and ventures as an academic administrator were featured in the UI President's 2002 Report under the title Establishing a network of partnerships for a community that ranges far beyond the borders of the campus: The work of a matchmaker: Collaborations build economic and social capital.
In addition to serving on numerous committees within the University of Iowa, Usha has served on numerous civic boards and committees including the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); the Council on Foundations-Community Foundations Leadership Team; the Community Foundation of Johnson County (Iowa); the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council's Program Committee; the Iowa Economic Development Board; the Iowa Biotechnology Association board; and the Iowa Business Council Deputies Committee. She is an active Rotarian belonging since 2003 to the Iowa City Noon Rotary Club and designated a Paul Harris Fellow in 2009.
Having grown up in New Delhi and Mumbai, India, she has lived in the United States since 1985. She is married to Ramji Balakrishnan, Professor of Accounting at the University of Iowa, and they have two children. Usha likes to walk, sing, write poetry, and solve crossword puzzles.
CARTHA has now become a way of life for Usha. Usha's entrepreneurial journeys continue to provide her with keen insights and understandings of where the (unseeable) human collaborative spirit resides, and how it can be tapped in support of academic research translation and innovations that enhance humanitarian impacts. Her belief is that collaborative spirits can be infectious making us feel better through a sense of interconnectedness with a larger humanity, and thus activate the process of socialization of our (undiscovered) aspirations.
Usha likes to write poetry that reflects a blending of her personal and professional experiences. Her poem titled "Healing in a Thousand Ways," was selected in 2011 for Iowa City's Poetry in Public Project, and appears at The Daily Palette.
Usha is also formally trained in South Indian Carnatic vocal music and performs at local events, festivals, and family gatherings. To explore and understand the profound possibilities of self-healing triggers and mutual empowerment through the live sharing of vocal music, Usha crafted a new project called "COME≡SING≡HEAL" through which she teaches music and also renders brief, live performances of ancient healing verses for friends over the phone and by hospital bedsides.
You can hear a sample of Usha's rendition of the Gayatri Mantra chant here along with a brief rationale for why Usha sings now.
You can also hear Usha sing briefly in this 2011 official documentary of the Hello Humanity/Global Health and Humanitarian Summit organized by CARTHA Board member Neil Shulman.