When a young student from a rural Nepali village with no running water finally found his way to America and boarded a string of Greyhound buses bound for Central Wyoming College in Riverton 30 years ago, it was a personal leap of faith.
Now that leap is turning into an effort to create a long-term pipeline for talent, innovation and business between Wyoming and Nepal — something far beyond the usual alumni-makes-good story.
Mohan Dangi had been studying to be a medical doctor in Pennsylvania, but was finding his aptitudes aligned better with engineering. He’d also become quite homesick for his native Nepal.
He had a friend, Ramesh Sedhain, attending CWC who thought he’d find a better fit there.
That landed Dangi in Shoshoni, where he found there was no direct connection to CWC for the Greyhound bus that had brought him there. He was stranded.
Wyoming did what it always does, however, and a few frantic phone calls later, Dangi had a ride coming to Shoshoni, to take him the rest of the way to his new school.
At the time, no one — least of all Dangi — imagined this would be the start of a future international partnership.
But three decades later Dangi, now a professor and a Ph.D., was back at CWC for the 2026 Innovation & Entrepreneurship Conference with Nepali colleagues in tow.
They are interested in building a bridge of opportunities between their two countries, a bridge that will foster talent, ideas, and business opportunities that travel both ways.
The partnership is still in its infancy, so there’s no certainty around what will happen yet. But it will likely start with student and teacher exchanges between the two countries.
That’s easy, low-hanging fruit, and a great place to start out. Long-term, the goal is loftier. They hope to connect their two emerging innovation ecosystems together, to help strengthen each other and create new business opportunities.
Dangi told Cowboy State Daily he sees his effort to help start this partnership as giving back to a program that once gave him so much, when he was a young, 20-year-old seeing the world outside of Nepal for the very first time.
“CWC created the platform that gave me a world-class education,” he said. “And I want to use that education to engage with the global community and bring people to the United States of America.”
Dangi brought Nepal’s new Consul General in San Francisco, Lakshuman Kanal, to the conference with him, as well as his friend Sedhain, who is now quality director for Bausch & Lomb Pharmaceutical, overseeing manufacturing facilities in Clearwater, Florida, and Warsaw, Poland.
Creating Global Opportunities In Riverton
For Central Wyoming College officials, the emerging Nepal initiative is much more than just a feel-good, alumni success story.
The college has been positioning itself as a small but mighty node in Wyoming’s thriving startup culture, an effort spearheaded by Bootstrap Collaborative Director Mike Hoyt.
“What we’re looking for, in a word, is opportunity,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “Those could be research, trade opportunities with different businesses, and then, really, it all comes back to students in an academic setting.”
CWC President Brad Tyndall told Cowboy State Daily the college hopes to reach beyond traditional borders and traditional approaches to bring unique opportunities to recruit and retain CWC students.
“The college has been investigating ways we can attract a lot more students to help the student experience here,” he added. “So, two of us went to India with a University of Wyoming delegation and worked to establish some ties in India, where we have an exchange now with a school there.”
Tyndall was talking with alumni, including Dangi, about that, and that turned a light bulb on for both of them, starting a brand-new conversation about opportunities with Nepal.
“He’s very well-connected,” Tyndall said. “And he’s often done memoranda of understanding with various governments, including India, Nepal, and others. So, he says, ‘Let’s do something great and amazing.’”
Connecting Two ‘Wonderlands’
Knowing that Nepal had just established a Consul General in the West to explore more partnerships with America, Dangi realized the timing couldn’t be better for this idea.
And CWC’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship Conference offered a perfect jumping off point to see what might be possible.
Kanal, who just took on his new role as Nepal’s Consul General in September, said he is building relationships across 11 Western states, but he has particularly liked what he has seen in Wyoming this week, with Dangi and Sedhain as his guides.
“We share a similar geographic situation with Wyoming,” Kanal told Cowboy State Daily. “We are a mountainous country, too. Nepal is one of the wonders of the Himalayas, the high snow mountains.
"And I have learned that Wyoming is the wonderland of America. So, the goal would be connecting the wonders of Himalaya to the wonderland of America.”
Student and teacher exchanges are the easiest way to start a partnership, but they aren’t his end goal, Kanal added.
“The goal would be to connect businesses, to connect enterprises, to connect the ecosystem of innovation,” he said. “Because that is what is needed to Nepal also.”
Kanal has been excited by the energy and ideas he’s seen in Riverton at the CWC conference. It’s also been a great chance to network with people who are actively shaping the Cowboy State’s startup culture.
“It’s also very exciting for me to have a courtesy meeting with the governor tomorrow morning,” he added. “I will have an opportunity again to present my credentials, and to present our willingness to engage with the government of Wyoming at all levels.”
Wyoming Mindset Still Inspires
These days Dangi is a world-leading expert in solid waste management, with a particular focus on the intersection of engineering and social sciences in low-income and developing countries.
When he first came to America, though, it was as someone who had grown up in a tiny village west of Kathmandu that did not have things like electricity or running water.
“There was a community spout coming from a spring that ran seven, eight months out of a year,” Dangi said. “So, everyone would queue up in the morning to get a bath or a bucket of water.”
His father, like everyone else in the village, was a farmer, but he was also a local politician with a wider vision of the world.
“My parents made sure I always stayed focused on my education,” Dangi said. “Fortunately, my family was able to provide for me. But there were many, many people … who didn’t have all those luxuries that my family and I had.”
His parents sent him to school in Kathmandu and encouraged him to continue his education in America.
Coming to America was an eye-opening experience for someone who had never even seen an airplane, much less flown in one, and who grew up in a village with essentially no electricity or technology.
Staying in America to go to school, however, was expensive. Too expensive for his parents to fully cover.
Dangi worked multiple jobs while also going to school.
He remembers shoveling snow from CWC sidewalks at 3 a.m. to start his days, which were packed with classes and studying, and more side jobs in between.
It was a lot of work, and he didn’t get much sleep. But Dangi remembers it all fondly.
“What I like to tell the people of Wyoming, regardless of how many times I leave the state, they seem to find ways to bring me back,” he said, adding he loves to quote former governor Dave Freudenthal’s favorite quote about Wyoming being the state with the “highest altitude, lowest multitude, and greatest attitude.”
“The attitude of Wyoming really made me feel like this is my second home,” he said. “Everyone here is so welcoming.”
You Can Do Anything From Wyoming
Wyoming and Nepal share many challenges, Tyndall, Kanal, and Dangi all said.
These challenges include things like building resilient rural communities, leveraging tourism without sacrificing cultural and environmental integrity, and creating credible pathways to lucrative careers for students whose families may have limited means.
Riverton, where CWC is located, has about 11,000 people, and it’s far from the coastal hubs that would usually dominate discussions of international business and innovation.
But with technology, the college is finding ways to reach beyond its borders and create one-of-a-kind global experiences for its students, even as they’re rooted in Wyoming’s own pioneering culture.
“A real theme of this conference is building leadership and entrepreneurial mindset,” Tyndall said. “And if you can take students, especially from the reservation — but really all of our students, because 85% of our students are really at risk — and throw them overseas and excite them, they become kind of local heroes to their family and friends.”
That creates momentum that keeps success going and spreads it to others, inspiring them to believe they can do the same thing.
“The international experience does that for people,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Wow, you did that? You can do anything.’”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
