RAJ KUMAR BHATTARAI, a pracademic person, has over three decades of experience in academia, private sector development, value chain analysis and business development services for MSMEs in Nepal. As Team Leader, he has led a number of studies on Nepal’s economy and business environment for clients such as the World Bank, ILO, IDRC, VSO, FNCSI, among others. For the last 20 years, Raj has been advising and assisting regulatory and government agencies such as the Insurance Regulatory Authority of Nepal (Beema Samiti), Policy Research Institute (Think Tank of the Government of Nepal), Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Science and Information Technology on the development and implementation of IT and socio-economic policies and programs. His 15 plus years’ (1990-2007) career in business, which concentrated in Nepal and South Asian region, Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore have given him a clear lens to look at the issues and challenges facing the private sector in rural and urban areas of Nepal. Raj has a PhD in Organisational Immune System and Change Management, and became a professor in 2022 at Tribhuvan University, where he has had tenured appointment since 2005. He is interested in building disaster resilience and value dynamics: the ways of optimism realization.