Nalini Tiwari Greenan was born and spent most of her youth in Guyana. From an early age, Nalini witnessed her parents working in underserved communities in Guyana as educators. Their task was herculean: schools had to be built from the ground-up and mentorship of students could simply never end with the school day. Not surprisingly, Nalini picked up a love of reading quickly in such a household.
A voracious self-taught reader, Nalini’s spirit of inquiry and adventure began with her love of books. Often finding herself unchallenged and bored in school, she sought out her own education, and took full advantage of the opportunity to finish out her secondary education at Richmond Hill High School in Queens, NY and begin a whole new adventure at 16 years old studying a range of disciplines and majoring in Psychology at Barnard College, Columbia University while exploring the vastness of New York City.
Her background in psychology, her immersion into the diverse cultural offerings of NYC, and her continued thirst for knowledge and desire to engage in new experiences lead her to the wild world of advertising, starting out her career at Young and Rubicam and then, needing to incorporate her passion for social change, moved to Partnership For A Drug Free America. This experience provided the bridge for Nalini to start working as a marketing consultant with other major corporations across several industries.
In 1996, Nalini’s desire for travel in a meaningful way led her to the world of specialized tourism. She had the unique opportunity to work on Art, Architecture, Ballet and Opera based tours to the newly opened markets in Eastern Europe. This experience solidified her passion and commitment to working in community based specialized tourism based on the heritage of a destination. This led to Nalini starting her own Marketing Company, Adya Communications LLC, in 2002.
In 2006, Nalini’s professional and personal history would find a synchronous relationship. She worked and lived in India for 18 months, a chance to reconnect to her own family’s history. Following her time overseas, Nalini reconnected once again to her history and culture, now working to radically re-introduce her “hometown” rum, El Dorado, to the U.S. Her breadth and depth of work in multiple industries set the stage for Nalini to build on all she had accomplished and create with her life partner, Thomas J. Greenan, and her brother, Avinnash P. Tiwari, PF Collectables LLC in 2017 and Adya Global LLC in 2018. Together, they committed both these companies to supporting the people of the regions where they do business by working with clients to actively support incredibly worthwhile causes.
Rather than conceive of social responsibility as an “add-on” to their corporate mission, Nalini has built and continues to build a business model that centers social responsibility and entrepreneurship within the communities and places she engages with. Nalini’s driving force in her work seeks to bring beauty to all of us in ways we can not only see, but also feel, touch, taste, smell, and experience even beyond our sensory perceptions.
Nalini and Adya’s founding partners took this adventure on as a means for them to connect back to their own heritage and culture and to experience the beauty of the world we are too often cut off from. Nalini hopes to bring her knowledge and experience to fellow adventurers and travelers, though never losing sight of the need to remember our histories, and to face the uglier parts of those
histories, as well. Her membership on several non-profit boards such as the Sakhi for South Asian Women, Friends of RPCV’s of Guyana, and We are GUTSY and her ongoing support of other non-profits that work tirelessly to help marginalized communities highlight Nalini’s drive to support and empower women and children in particular.
Through her work and beyond her work, Nalini is committed to advocating for equal rights for all, and to share some of the beauty in this world with others.
