Sivani Babu is the co-founder and Creative Director of exploration-driven media company Hidden Compass. She is an award-winning nature photographer and travel journalist with a sometimes-unhealthy fascination with extreme landscapes and weather. As a writer and photographer, she has contributed to numerous outlets, including BBC Travel, CNN, AFAR, Backpacker, and Outdoor Photographer.
Sivani graduated from the University of Chicago with three majors and one Lazarused newspaper. At the University of Pennsylvania Law School, she taught high schoolers about their constitutional rights. As a Teach for America corps member, she taught eighth graders about the tangency of math and literacy. After working on a Supreme Court case and representing hundreds of indigent criminal defendants, Sivani left her career as a federal public defender to sail across the most brutal sea on earth. Since then, she has chased storms through Tornado Alley, searched for polar bears in the Arctic Circle, and survived a broken neck and a concussion while sailing through a lightning storm at night in the Bermuda Triangle. Just recently, her story about polar bears and climate change was included as a Notable Mention in the 2019 edition of Best American Travel Writing. Sivani is currently at work on her first book, Saving the Night: Shedding Light on the Importance of Darkness.