Impact@CIIS: Ideal to Real (2021)
A workshop on Ideal to Real: Creating Integral Projects in a Material World with Abeer Desai.
Abeer Desai is an Indian-born Singaporean entrepreneur, philosopher and artist based in Santa Cruz, California. From an early age, Abeer's life has driven him across geographies and communities, giving him a unique lens into the breadth and depth of the human story. Abeer's mission to support the spiritual unfolding of humanity germinated on mystical hike through the wilderness of southwestern China as a college student at New York University's Stern School of Business. While at Stern, Abeer was selected for the World Studies Track honors program, involving curriculum across 3 continents, and he helped found Net Impact NYU, a social enterprise student group. Upon graduation, Abeer reneged on a job offer in corporate finance at JP Morgan Chase, leaving Manhattan for Machur—an isolated tribal community in South India to explore how business principles could be applied towards social development. During this time he was mentored by three of India's luminaries: the industrialist Dr. Sudarshan Maini, the organic farmer Vivek Cariappa, and the social worker Ganesh Shenoy.
In 2012 Abeer founded Zero Ventures Partners, a global strategy boutique serving clients across Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, New York, Singapore, Mumbai, and New Delhi. In 2014 Abeer was accepted to the pioneering Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness department at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco—a leading center of Integral Philosophy. Abeer's world was opened to the evolutionary story of consciousness from the Big Bang through Post Modernity, and contemporary developments in transpersonal psychology. Abeer's mentors included several philosophical luminaries including cultural historian Richard Tarnas, psychiatrist Stanislav Grof, cosmologist Brian Swimme, and religious scholar Christopher Bache.