Pratik Rijal ’18
Co-Founder and COO, Nepal Tea Collective
B.S., Finance, 2018
Pratik Rijal worked on Wall Street after graduating for about three years before he felt it was time for a change. He co-founded Nepal Tea Collective, a tea company that sources its tea directly from his family's farms in Nepal. The Collective offers free housing accommodations to its full-time farmers and scholarship opportunities to its farmers’ children.
Pratik recently was accepted as one of the impact entrepreneurs for a Watson Institute Fellowship. He hosted an impact talk series at Google Boulder as part of the fellowship.
"The three years out in St. Cloud was the best time of my life. St. Cloud was a different world for me, but at the same time … the experience in St. Cloud proved to be very defining for my personal and professional goals,” he said. “The Nepali community is huge out in St. Cloud, so I never felt homesick at all." - Pratik Rijal ’18
STORY: Alumnus gives up Wall Street career to start company that gives back to his homeland