COURTNEY ZHENG dress, DINOSAUR DESIGNS bangles and earrings. Photographed by Levon Baird for the May 2025 Issue of Vogue Philippines
Nadya Hutagalung on helping changemakers stand strong for their advocacies.
It was in the ‘90s, while working as a VJ on MTV, that Nadya Hutagalung discovered the impact of her voice. She recalls freestyling most of her spiels, often slipping in environmental messages. One day, fellow VJ Mike Casem told her that his cousin had donated half of his savings to help orangutans after hearing Nadya speak about their plight on the channel. Since then, she has not stopped publicly advocating for nature. “To me, it really is simple math. We’re one finite Earth and there’s only x amount of resources and we’re growing and growing in population,” points out the Indonesian-Australian presenter also known for hosting and judging the first two cycles of Asia’s Next Top Model.
Her mission took shape after witnessing the stark change in marine life at a Thailand dive site. She was appalled by the degradation she saw on her second trip, just a couple of years after the first. This happened around the same time as the most damaging transboundary haze pollution. The combination of the incidents left her desperately wondering, “Why is nobody doing anything?”
Over the years, her identity as an eco-activist grew more prominent, expanding to include the role of ambassador for the Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP). In this capacity, she joined an elite group alongside Dr. Jane Goodall, the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees. As a longtime UN Environment Goodwill Ambassador, she has played a key role in launching several campaigns. Some years ago, she was also invited by Prince William, Prince of Wales, to serve as an advocate for the Earthshot Prize, the most prestigious environmental award in history. Her work has led her to speak on the stages of highly regarded events and organizations such as the World Economic Forum and the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
She has received her share of accolades, including a nomination for “Most Responsible Celebrity” at the 2012 International Green Awards alongside George Clooney and Robert Redford. She was voted one of Asia’s Leading Trendmakers by Asiaweek magazine, together with the Dalai Lama and actors Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun Fat. She was recognized with the 9th Annual Infinite Merit Award by Senayan City, an honor extended to those who bring glory to Indonesia. And just last October, she received the Special Achievement Award at the Green Awards during the Greentech Festival in Singapore.
Nadya has an extensive list of achievements in the conservation space. Among them, she is most proud of “Let Elephants Be Elephants,” an initiative aimed at reducing the demand for ivory, a trade that threatens elephant populations. “So much work went into it, but we had great success. We managed to change legislation in Thailand… all of the places that we had filmed that had ivory previously no longer had ivory… the sale of ivory dropped dramatically,” she happily elaborates.
Pushing for reforms can create enemies. “I very quickly became a mouthpiece for the UN for the illegal wildlife trade. I was stepping on too many toes, and I was actually warned three times that my life was in danger. So as a mother of three, I had to step back from that particular subject matter and then shifted my focus to trying to support Sumatran elephants and Sumatran orangutans,” she reveals.
And then there’s the constant exposure to overwhelming grim realities that can take a toll on one’s spirit. “In 2018, I hit a wall. It was just one thing after another after another, and then I got depressed,” she discloses. The experience was an eye-opener. “It’s so critical for us to be well and to have the resources to be well, mentally and physically; and know when to step away, to say I can’t do that, to say I need to prioritize myself first before I can go out there and be a changemaker. That’s not selfish, that’s sustainable compassion, knowing I need to look after myself so that I can go out there and be a positive influence in my world,” she explains.
“That’s not selfish, that’s sustainable compassion, knowing I need to look after myself so that I can go out there and be a positive influence in my world.”
The importance of self-care was further underscored when she was faced with a health scare around four years ago; her doctors thought she was having a heart attack. “After that, I had a lot of time. I basically was, ‘I need to stop everything and really tune into my body and tune into what it is that I should be doing.’”
As she downshifted, a lot of her unprocessed trauma came up. From being kidnapped to surviving sexual assault, “to being in abusive relationships, ending up with a broken nose and fractured ribs, or psychologically abusive or controlling. All forms of abuse, I kind of have experienced it, and because I was so alone, I didn’t have any support system, I had to just get up and carry on.” She’s had quite a storied journey, leaving her home in Australia and starting her modeling career in Japan at just 12 years old.
Buddhism, which she has been practicing for many decades, helped her cope in some ways. “But I had not looked at the physiological effects of trauma, so when the heart incident happened, I think a lot of the unresolved trauma also came to the surface. It demanded to be looked at, to be cradled, to be attended to, to be nurtured. It demanded to be held and supported. And that has been part of my process over the last few years, really acknowledging the wounds and the hard stuff that I have been through.”
Yin yoga, nature therapy, sound, music, walking with her dog, dancing, using her tuning fork, and creative play with community are just some of her go-tos for calming and settling her nervous system. “I had to work really hard to allow play because I felt guilty playing because how could you play when the world is crumbling, right? How can we allow ourselves to feel good when there’s so much that we should be fighting for? But you can’t fight well unless you have a full tank of joy, and joy is the antidote to trauma, right? So it’s complex, it’s hard, it takes a lot of work but it just needs to be done,” she emphasizes. “Understanding impermanence, and also making friends with whatever’s coming up in my body, like, it’s hard, I can see the anxiety, I can see the fear, but that’s not me… And instead of being fearful around it, which creates more anxiety, it’s like, how do I allow what is coming up to move through me?” she adds.
Attending a week-long live-in trauma retreat has provided her with a lot of somatic tools to work with. “I sometimes get into very, very dark and painful places,” she admits. But she remains grateful because her struggles have gifted her with the tools to heal, which she is now sharing with others. “The hard stuff gives me a deeper sense of empathy and connection. That lived experience allows me to connect to people in a way that maybe others can’t.”
With all these recent life developments, her focus these days looks a little different from usual. Her calendar is filled with retreats that she’s leading through Svara Mandala, her company, which also offers sound baths and meditation sessions that she personally facilitates. Each retreat is unique, with different co-facilitators depending on the locations, needs, and themes.
“The ones that I do here,” she says, referring to Australia where she is currently based, “will be more focused on getting into nature, into creativity, and into just being really slow and intentional, whereas the retreats in Bhutan are a lot more spiritual, a lot more physical, and a lot more growth and purpose-focused.”
The objective is, in general, to provide support to changemakers, steer them out of the anxious mind. “Every person has the potential to be a changemaker, and those changemakers within us need to be supported to be well and have the tools of resilience and be well-resourced within,” she explains. Target participants are corporate leaders since they’re in the position to move the needle. “The most important people to shepherd, to support, to guide, to influence are the corporate leaders. When we help them to reset their inner compass, then all of the decisions that they make, hopefully, moving forward will be influenced in a more mindful way,” she points out.
It might seem that Nadya is deviating from the conservation and sustainability path, but she doesn’t see it that way at all. “For me, all of these things are deeply interconnected,” she rationalizes. This deliberate turn to supporting changemakers’ mental health is a crucial element in keeping causes moving forward. “I started talking about mental health being the next most important thing 10 years ago, and it really is. I know that for myself,” she affirms.
By NANA NADAL. Photographs by LEVON BAIRD. Styling by CARLOS MANGUBAT. Beauty Editor JOYCE OREÑA. Hair and Makeup by CHELSEA JOHNSON. Beauty Writer: Bianca Custodio. Producers: Bianca Zaragoza, Carlos Mangubat. Talent: Nadya Hutagalung. Make-up Artist and Hair Stylist: Chelsea Johnson. Digital Technician: Alex Waugh. Stylist’s Assistant: Kellee Merriman. Photographer’s Assistant: Vada Gock. Special thanks to The Studio, Avoca NSW.
