About Us
Directors
Naveen Khurana, MS, MBA (Naveen Krsna Dasa)
President
Former GBC Board Member
Resident – USA
David Wolf, PhD (Dhira Govinda Dasa)
Vice President
Founder & Director (1998 – 2004) of ISKCON Central Office of Child Protection
Resident – USA
Naveen Khurana, MS, MBA (Naveen Krsna Dasa)
Naveen Khurana, MS, MBA (Naveen Krsna Dasa) was born into a family of Vaisnavas in 1947 in New Delhi, India. From the earliest age, Naveen was attracted to Ramayana and Mahabharata, and temple Deities. In 1970, after earning his bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT- Delhi), Naveen entered the University of Illinois, USA, where he got two master’s degrees, in Civil Engineering and Business Administration, graduating top in his class. During his college days in Illinois, he received Bhagavad Gita As It Is, and copies of Back to Godhead. Reading this sublime literature, he knew that he had found the perfect teacher and spiritual master.
Naveen’s career took him to Detroit, where he associated with the followers of Srila Prabhupada, and received his first initiation in 1975. When Srila Prabhupada visited Detroit in 1975, he resided at Naveen’s apartment, and in 1976 Srila Prabhupada personally gave to Naveen Krsna Dasa the Gayatri Mantra and Brahmana Thread. Srila Prabhupada directly expressed to the local GBC that he wanted Naveen Krsna to serve in management and administration, and early in 1978 Naveen Krsna accepted the service of Temple President for ISKCON Detroit. After serving in this capacity for about five years, devotees in Texas asked him to be Temple President in Dallas. Naveen dedicated himself to the Dallas yatra for several years, and during that time he began to develop means and strategies for transforming ISKCON’s administrative and financial culture towards the dharmic, sattvic, respectable principles delineated by Srila Prabhupada.
Into the 1990s, Naveen Krsna was very instrumental in supporting ISKCON to effectively and responsibly handle major legal cases and threats.
In 1992 Naveen Krsna founded the ISKCON Foundation. Through the ISKCON Foundation Naveen guided ISKCON towards principles and practices of management and fundraising that are honourable, upright and integral.
In 1994 the ISKCON Governing Body Commission (GBC) requested Naveen to become the GBC Minister of Management and Finance, and till 2000 Naveen Krsna Dasa served on the GBC body.
Akshaya Patra is an agency that serves Lunch Prasadam to school children in India, and Naveen Krsna has been a key advisor for Akshaya Patra, supporting the organization to move from $100,000 / year to $80,000,000 / year, and from serving 3,000 children per day to two million per day. For more than a decade Naveen served as a Trustee for Akshaya Patra.
Naveen Krsna saw and realized with clarity that a few persons were misleading and misguiding the vast majority of those in positions of leadership in ISKCON, particularly in relation to Srila Prabhupada’s Disappearance Pastime. This was glaringly evident to Naveen in the GBC’s book on the topic, issued in 2000. As a result, Naveen Krsna resigned from the GBC. To quote Naveen Krsna Dasa, “I left ISKCON so that I could serve Srila Prabhupada again”.
Naveen is a highly successful real estate professional, and he relishes the association of Vaisnava friends and family, including his four children and twelve grandchildren.
His vision is to dedicate himself to fulfilling Srila Prabhupada’s vision, which is to establish a house in which the whole world can live peacefully, in love, affection, and trust.
David Wolf, PhD (Dhira Govinda Dasa)
David B. Wolf, PhD (Dhira Govinda Dasa) has practiced and taught bhakti-yoga since the early 1980s. In the late 80s/early 90s he led a book distribution, sankirtana party in Arab villages in the Middle East, and is the author of Krsna, Israel, and the Druze: An Interreligious Odyssey. Dhira Govinda Dasa served as ISKCON Temple President in Tel Aviv, and in the 90s and 2000s served as Chairperson of the Board of Directors of ISKCON of Alachua (New Raman-Reti), the largest community of bhakti-yoga practitioners in North America. In 1998, he established the ISKCON Central Office of Child Protection and served as director for more than six years. He is the founder of the Satvatove Institute School of Transformative Coaching, and has conducted hundreds of Vaisnava-based transformational seminars around the world.
David Wolf developed the Vedic Personality Inventory (VPI), and his doctoral dissertation is entitled Effects of the Hare Krsna Maha Mantra on Stress, Depression, and the Three Gunas. He is a world leader in mantra meditation research and has published extensively in social science research journals. Since the early 2000s, he has supervised psychotherapy interns for the State of Florida, and he has extensive experience in fields such as children and family counselling, medical social work, and crisis-intervention. Dr. Wolf has been featured as a communications expert on media outlets such as Fox News and CNN News, and is the author of Relationships That Work: The Power of Conscious Living. Additionally, he is the author of The Power of Bhakti: Ancient Spiritual Science for the Modern Distracted Mind, and his favourite activity is reading Srila Prabhupada’s books.