Sonam Wangchuk is a highly innovative engineer, educator, and social entrepreneur renowned for pioneering the use of indigenous design and simple technology to solve complex problems in the Himalayan mountains. For over three decades, he has been instrumental in fundamentally changing the face of education in Ladakh and is the visionary behind the famous "Ice Stupa" artificial glaciers, which combat the region's water crisis.

Wangchuk founded the Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) in 1988 with the mission of reforming the government school system. His transformative approach, codified in Operation New Hope, helped improve the 10th-grade pass percentage from a dismal 5% to 75%. For students who failed, he founded the SECMOL Alternative School Campus, where the admission criterion is failure itself, demonstrating his belief in unleashing potential beyond conventional academic metrics.

As an engineer, he has been teaching innovation at the SECMOL Alternative School, where he and his students designed and built low-cost, solar-heated buildings made of earth and mud that maintain above-freezing temperatures in harsh Ladakhi winters. His signature innovation, the "Ice Stupa" artificial glacier, stores winter water in giant ice cones that melt precisely in the summer for irrigation, solving the region's critical water scarcity due to melting glaciers.

Wangchuk is the recipient of numerous international awards, including the Rolex Award for Enterprise 2016 and the Terra Award 2016 for World’s Best Earth Buildings. As a speaker, his sessions throw a whole new perspective on innovation and entrepreneurship that embraces social change. He motivates audiences with compelling stories that link ingenuity, education reform, and environmental action to create profound, self-sustaining community development.