Consuelo Kraja, Surata Institute Chancellor
The future Chancellor of the Surata Institute was born in 876 to an impoverished family on the outskirts of the now-thriving metropolis of Beneb Center (Rassa, Lucasta heliosphere). She lost her father at a young age when, to buy enough grain for his family to survive the winter, he sold his organs to an offworld body harvesting concern.
Her mother lived long enough to see Conseulo accepted into the Institute on a benevolent scholarship. Consuelo did more than graduate. In time she became a professor, a Committee chair, and—after a swift series of political maneuverings—the Chancellor of the Institute itself at the age of 36.
Driven by her bone-deep loathing of poverty and inequality, the Institute pivoted from a charitable institution to one focused on asset acquisition, Conseulo’s view being that she could do the most effective good via the accumulation and deployment of wealth (and with it: power).
Chancellor Kraja is the least stuffy, the least formal, the hardest to ruffle, of any member of the Surata Institute Committee. She smiles more often than not, and has a warm and gentle demeanor in most of her interactions. However, the woman who single-handedly rose from dirt to the highest seat in the most lauded academy within a dozen heliospheres is no easy mark. Strategizing several steps in advance, she can and does disarm any threat to her vision of the Surata Institute as humanity’s best hope of survival and betterment.
Chancellor Kraja is today 118 years old thanks to life-extension treatments, but doesn’t look a day over a vigorous 70.
She and Dame Christelle van Ledeghem were fast friends, despite their very different backgrounds and often butting heads on the Committee.
