Dekila is the founder and director of the Loka Initiative. She is an accomplished environmental program director, with 20+ years of experience in designing and implementing global conservation and climate strategies and projects. Known as an innovator in the environmental field, Dekila has created faith-led environmental and climate partnerships all around the world, designed and managed biodiversity landscape and freshwater conservation strategies, and is deeply invested in community-based solutions. She began her career in 2001 working for the World Wildlife Fund in the Eastern Himalayas and the Mekong region. In 2008, she helped establish Khoryug, an association of over 50 Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and nunneries implementing environmental projects across the Himalayas under the auspices of His Holiness the Karmapa. In 2009, Dekila founded and led WWF Sacred Earth, a 5-year pilot program that built partnerships with faith leaders and religious institutions towards conservation and climate results in the Amazon, East Africa, Himalayas, Mekong, and the United States. She received the prestigious Yale McCluskey Award in 2014 for her work and moved to the Yale School of Environmental Studies as an associate research scientist, where she researched, lectured and designed the prototype for what is now the Loka Initiative. Dekila is originally from the Himalayan state of Sikkim in northeast India and is of Bhutia origin.

Dekila lives in Madison, WI with her spouse and a very spoiled dog, Rewa.