Artists

Let Elephants Be Elephants founder and ambassador for the UN Environment and Great Apes Survival Partnership.

media personality and environmentalist One of Asia’s most prominent voices in the Green Movement is Nadya Hutagalung, who used her 25 years in television, film, and fashion to her advantage.

Nadya made news by creating one of Singapore’s first eco-homes from scratch, a project that took three years to complete. Nadya devotes her time and voice to environmental campaigning. From that assignment grew Nadya’s all-time favourite project, www.greenkampong.com, which developed into a website resource for those looking for news and information on sustainable living.
An ivory reduction campaign Nadya developed in 2013 with a South East Asian audience in mind led to her spending a month throughout Africa and Asia documenting the illegal trade’s effects. Over 8000 people have so far pledged not to purchase ivory as part of the “Let Elephants Be Elephants” campaign. Nadya received The 9th Annual Infinite Merit Award from Senayan City for her efforts on this campaign and her dedication to environmental advocacy. This honour is granted to people whose contributions are thought to promote Indonesia.

Nadya won the Best Light Entertainment Presenter Award at the Asian Television Awards in 1997 thanks to her innate combination of assurance, humour, and the ability to simply entertain. She was selected as Singapore’s Most Gorgeous Woman and Showtime Personality of the Year by readers of Female magazine in the same year. Additionally, Indonesian tabloid Bintang listed Nadya as one of the top ten “Shining Stars” on Indonesian television.

CNN named Nadya one of the Top 20 Most Influential People in Singapore in 2009. She also received the Best Host TV Host award from ELLE magazine in the same year, demonstrating her tenacity in a competitive field.

In appreciation of Nadya’s extraordinary contributions as a changemaker, thought and action leader, and crafting a more inclusive, sustainable, and better world, the Singapore Innovation Park also gave her the SIP Fellow Awards.

For her unique capacity to inspire and captivate, it is not surprising that Nadya was chosen by Asiaweek magazine as one of Asia’s Leading Trendmakers, alongside the Dalai Lama, Michelle Yeoh, and Chow Yun Fatt.

Along with George Clooney, Robert Redford, and Penelope Cruise, Nadya was nominated as “Most Responsible Celebrity” at the 2012 International Green Awards. Indonesia Tatler later dubbed her a “Hero of Philanthropy.” The same year, Nadya received the MNC Lifestyle Award from the Indonesian MNC Lifestyle Channel for inspiring all Indonesian women.

In addition, Nadya takes great pride in serving on the board of The Green School in Bali, Indonesia, which the US Green Building Council named the “Greenest School on Earth.”

At the Fimela.com What Women Wants Awards in 2014, readers chose Nadya as their Most Wanted Female of the Year. She was a featured speaker at the World Leaders’ talks on “The Nature of Crime: The Extent and Impact of Illegal Wildlife Crime.”

Speaking at the most recent IUCN World Parks Congress in Sydney, she served as Singapore’s ambassador for Earth Hour for the previous six years and is now the global ambassador for Earth Hour as well as the Elephant Warrior campaign.

When World Wildlife Day was observed on March 3–4 in New York, Nadya was invited to speak to the UN General Assembly as the GRASP Ambassador. The unique alliance brings together nearly 100 national governments, conservation groups, research institutions, United Nations agencies, and private companies dedicated to ensuring the long-term survival of chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and bonobos in Africa and Asia. Jane Goodall is the fifth Ambassador of GRASP, joining Richard Leakey, Russell Mittermeier, Richard Wrangham, and Richard Leakey.

As a UN Environment Ambassador, Nadya joined actor Adrian Grenier and Erik Solheim to start the global campaign #cleanseas, which aims to reduce significant sources of marine litter by pressuring governments to adopt plastic reduction laws.

She has been actively involved in a number of UN initiatives over the past year. In March 2019, Nadya hosted and presented a series of pop-up fashion installations for the UN Alliance For Sustainable Fashion, an initiative that aims to stop the fashion industry’s environmentally and socially harmful practises and instead use it as a tool to improve the world’s ecosystems. She moderated the sixth Global Environment Outlook edition in the same month, which is the most thorough and rigorous assessment of the state of the environment conducted by the UN in the last five years; in November 2019, she delivered the keynote address at the inaugural SEA of Solutions 2019 partnership week, which was organised by SEA circular, a joint project of the UN Environment Programme and the Coordinating Body on the Seas of East Asia (COBSEA).

Nadya contributes her voice to numerous additional events in addition to UN Initiative / Events. She was invited to speak at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the New Champions this year in Dalian on three panels over the course of two days. The panels’ topics included Eco-Activism Goes Global, where she discussed the emergence of a new generation of eco-warriors and the lessons she has learned about advancing the change that our children demand; The Art of Influence, which addressed how Asia’s expanding influence in culture and entertainment is influencing a new era of globalisation; and Safeguard

In December 2018, Nadya published her own book, Walk with Me, which discusses various facets of her life and work. This book has quickly gained popularity among both fans and general readers. The book also details Nadya’s journey toward embracing sustainability and touches on a variety of other facets of her life and 30-year career.