
Jonathan Dickstein is Assistant Professor of Jain Studies at Arihanta Institute. He received a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2022. Jonathan's areas of research include Jain Studies, religion and ecology, comparative ethics, and South Asian religions.
Nirva Patel is the Executive Director at the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School and a passionate advocate for animal welfare. She is also a registered patent attorney, biomedical engineer, and executive producer for several plant-based films, including “The Game Changers,” “The End of Medicine,” and “Meat Me Halfway.” As Chair of the Board of Directors, Nirva is dedicated to furthering Farm Sanctuary’s commitment to addressing the full scope of interrelated social injustices rooted in animal agriculture. For close to a decade, Nirva worked in animal advocacy in Mumbai, India. In the U.S., she has individually sparked many advocacy campaigns, including successfully pushing to ban the sale of fur in Weston, Massachusetts, and demanding Jain temples across the U.S. in 2018 remove ghee and dairy from their offerings. She also serves on the International Vegan Film Festival board and is an Advisory Board Member of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (MSPCA). She has provided strategic fundraising efforts for numerous non- profit capital and development campaigns in Boston. Nirva holds a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Boston University, a J.D. from The New England School of Law, and an M.S. in Animals and Public Policy from Tufts University. Her passion for animals was predicated by the Jain philosophy of ahimsa (non-violence), which advocates for a vegan lifestyle. She lives in Boston with her husband, four children, and two rescued rabbits.
Cogen Bohanec is an Assistant Professor in Sanskrit and Jain Studies at Arihanta Institute where he teaches Sanskrit language, and Jain philosophy and its applications, and Sanskrit and other languages. He is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Claremont School of Theology (CST), and he has taught numerous classes on South Asian Religions and Sanskrit at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley. Dr. Bohanec specializes in comparative dharma traditions, philosophy of religion, and Sanskrit language and literature, and has numerous publications in those areas. He has a PhD in “Historical and Cultural Studies of Religion” with an emphasis in Hindu Studies from GTU, and he also holds an MA in Buddhist Studies from the Institute of Buddhist Studies at GTU.
Parveen Jain, PhD is the founder, CEO and Chairman of Arihanta Institute, and the author of An Introduction to Jain Philosophy. He had an exciting career of over thirty years as founder and chief executive of multiple technology companies, and a senior executive role at McAfee, the cyber security company, and in 2014, he retired from active corporate life to devote his full time to philanthropic activities.
Parveen has always cherished philanthropy and has held leadership roles in various non-profit organizations. He has been a long-time trustee of the International Mahavira Jain Mission, where he has been deeply involved with the growth of Siddhachalam, the first Jain tīrtha outside of India, from its founding. He led the team to build the Jain Temple in the San Francisco Bay Area, has served as chairman and president of Jain Center of Northern California, and continues to be an active advisor. Previously, he was a founding director of the Sunnyvale Hindu Temple, served as a trustee of the American Foundation for the Blind, was a founding team member of the South Asian Heart Center, and served as a founding director of Stanford Center for Asian Health Research and Education (Stanford-CARE).
Parveen is most passionate about furthering the initiatives inspired by Ācārya Sushil Kumar in the service of Jain tradition: promoting the message of nonviolence, creating Jain educational platforms, and applying Jain principles to everyday life among the growing global Jain community, for current and future generations.