Nicholas Vreeland, also known as Rato Khen Rinpoche, Geshe Thupten Lhundup, is a fully ordained Tibetan Buddhist monk and Abbot of Rato Dratsang, a 10th century Tibetan Buddhist Monastery, as this year’s keynote speaker. Vreeland, born in Geneva as the son of diplomat Frederick Vreeland and grandson of fashion icon Diana Vreeland, first studied film at New York University, and became a photographer and apprentice to Irving Penn and Richard Avedon. On a photographic assignment in India in 1979, Vreeland, met the Dalai Lama, and was asked to photograph his first trip to North America. In 1985 Vreeland became a monk and was awarded a Geshe degree, equivalent to a PhD. In 1998, he returned to New York to assist his teacher, Khyongla Rinpoche, and to help run Kunkhyab Thardo Ling—the Tibet Center, which Rinpoche founded. In 2012, His Holiness the Dalai Lama appointed Vreeland Abbot of Rato Dratsang, in the Mungod Tibetan Settlement in Karnataka, India which is one of eleven important Tibetan Government monasteries under His Holiness's authority. H.H. The Dalai Lama commented. that “Vreeland's special duty is to bridge Tibetan tradition and the Western world.”

Vreeland now spends half of his time in Rato Monastery in India, and the other half in the United States, where he is the Director of The Tibet Center, New York City's oldest Tibetan Buddhist center. An exhibition of twenty of Vreeland's images has traveled to twelve cities around the world, and has raised funds to enable the rebuilding of Rato Monastery in India. 

Vreeland is the editor of the books, An Open Heart, a New York Times best seller, and the 2011 release, A Profound Mind, both authored by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.