Biography

Hair tied in a high ponytail, a multi-purpose ‘Made in Nepal’ backpack on her back, a tote bag with a lunch box and the keys of her electric car in her hand – Sumana Shrestha walks into the Federal Parliament Secretariat at Singha Durbar.
She is met with the few women working in the Secretariat, and one of the security officials comments, “you look like a foreigner.”
“Why?” - asked surprised Sumana. The official says, “you carry your own backpack, you carry your own lunch, you don’t show off that Parliamentarian badge of yours; you look like a foreigner.”

Sumana Shrestha is a member of the second federal parliament of Nepal. She is a member of the House of Representatives and was elected as the proportional representative of the indigenous community through Rastriya Swatantra Party.

Sumana holds an MBA (Masters in Business Administration) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management. She got her BA from Bryn Mawr College in Economics and Mathematics from Haverford college.

Before coming back to Nepal in 2015, she was in the US working as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and has also worked as a trader and financial analyst at Citigroup. In May 2015, Sumana was sent by her company, BCG to work with the World Food Programme for three months during the emergency context of post-earthquake 2015. Then, she decided to stay on.

Sumana has spent years leading various grassroots movements for Nepal: coordinated the collection and distribution of earthquake relief packages from the Nepali diaspora, chaired management sub-committees of Kasthamandap Reconstruction Committee and Save RaniPokhari and lobbied for access to COVID vaccines for Nepali citizens in the US Senate.

Sumana isn’t just philanthropic at heart but is also an entrepreneur and a problem solver. She also started initiatives such as Carpool Kathmandu and Medication for Nepal (which was applauded by President Barack Obama at the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Palo Alto, California), to address the fuel crisis and persistent inequalities that the earthquake had exacerbated.

A published mathematician in the field of topology and geometry, prior to joining politics, Sumana worked as a management consultant and an entrepreneur.

As a politician with a rich background and experience in technology and economics, Sumana has three major goals: Creating Tech Jobs, Engaging the Nepali Diaspora in Nepal’s Development and Planning for a succession of Political Leaders.

She aspires to build self-sustaining systems and will need your assistance in doing so.

“I act because I am not satisfied with the way things are being done. I see that they should be done differently, and in that capacity, I try to bring about change.”

Districts under Sumana’s Jurisdiction: East Rukum, West Rukum, Rasuwa and Kathmandu