BiographyBorn in India in 1952, Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental leader and thinker. Shiva is a leader in the International Forum on Globalization, along with Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin. The founder of Navdanya (“nine seeds”), a movement promoting diversity and use of native seeds, she also founded the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Ecology in her mother’s cowshed in 1997. Its studies have validated the ecological value of traditional farming and have been instrumental in fighting destructive development projects in India. Shiva is the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees, including the 1993 Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right Livelihood Award), the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize for her commitment to social justice, and the 2011 Calgary Peace Prize from the Consortium for Peace Studies at the University of Calgary. In 2011 Forbes named Shiva "one of the 7 most influential women in the world."