BOARD OF TRUSTEES
MAP FOUNDATION, INC.
Dr. Mukesh Aghi
Mukesh Aghi serves as President of the United States-India Strategic Partnership Forum and has extensive experience working with business and government leaders in the United States and India in the strengthening of ties between the two countries. Previously, he served as Chief Executive and Member of the Board at Larsen & Toubro Infotech Ltd., Chairman and CEO of the Asia-Pacific region at Steria, Inc. (India), and as President of IBM India. Aghi holds several degrees including an advanced management diploma from Harvard Business School, and a Ph.D. in international relations from Claremont Graduate University. He has been recognized by Esquire Magazine as a Global Leader and won many awards over the course of his professional career, including the JRD Tata Leadership Award.
Abhishek Poddar
Abhishek Poddar is the founder of MAP and a prominent collector and patron of the arts in India. Poddar is involved in various family group companies with diverse interests and also serves on the advisory committees of several cultural institutions including the Deccan Heritage Foundation and FIND (Foundation Inde-Europe de Nouveaux Dialogues or the India-Europe Foundation for New Dialogues) headquartered in Rome.
Dr. Gursharan Singh Sidhu
Dr. Gursharan S. Sidhu holds degrees from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Madras) and Stanford University. After a long career in academia and the technological sector (Apple Inc. and Microsoft), he now focuses on his passion for the arts of India. He and his wife collect traditional and vernacular paintings from India and art from Mexico.
Dr. Sidhu was formerly Co-Chairman of the Board of the Smithsonian Institution’s Freer and Sackler Galleries and is currently on the Board of Trustees of the Seattle Art Museum as well as the Acquisitions Committee of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.
Susan Whitehead
Susan Whitehead is Vice Chair and life board member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT. In addition to being a lifetime trustee of MIT, she currently serves as the Chair of the Board of Berklee College of Music, and on the boards of the Museum of Science in Boston and Horizons for Homeless Children. She is also the former Chair of Horizons for Homeless Children, the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, Bayview Correctional Facility in NYC, and Whitehead Institute. Previously a trial attorney in Boston, Whitehead also has experience as an assistant district attorney in New York City and directed a clinical program at Brooklyn Law School. She has had a lifelong passion for the visual arts, particularly photography.
Rajiv Chaudhri
Rajiv is Founder and CEO of Sunsara Capital. His professional experience encompasses over 35 years in the investment management business in a variety of leadership capacities. Prior to founding Sunsara, Rajiv was the Founder and President of Digital Century Capital for 15 years, a research driven, long-short, high-tech hedge fund that managed a peak portfolio in excess of $1 billion invested in both public and private technology companies. He has been an early investor in companies like AOL, Yahoo, EBAY, Inktomi, SanDisk, Blackberry, VMC, PayPal and Google. He was a trusted financial and strategic advisor to Motorola, Texas Instruments, Intel, SanDisk, AMD, Altera, Micron Technology, TSMC, NEC, Toshiba and other Asian high technology companies. His two passions outside of investing are public policy and collecting Indian art.
András Szántó
András Szántó, Ph.D. is the founder of New York-based Andras Szanto LLC, which provides strategic counsel to museums, cultural organisations, commercial brands, and educational institutions worldwide in all phases of the conceptualisation and implementation of strategic plans and cultural initiatives.
András is also an influential writer and researcher in the fields of art, media, cultural policy, arts sponsorship, and philanthropy. Author and editor of numerous books and research reports, he has been a contributor to The Art Newspaper, The New York Times, Artforum, and many leading publications. András has taught art business and marketing at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art and served as director of the National Arts Journalism Program and the NEA Arts Journalism Institute, both at Columbia University.
Shanay Jhaveri
Shanay Jhaveri is an independent curator. A graduate of Brown University, and Jhaveri holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art. His recent exhibitions include Companionable Silences (2013) at the Palais de Tokyo, Everything we do is music (2017) at the Drawing Room, and film programs for the Dhaka Art Summit, the Film at Lincoln Center, and Tate Modern. His books include Western Artists and India: Creative Inspirations in Art and Design, Outsider Films on India: 1950–1990, and America: Films from Elsewhere. He has published widely in various art journals. Jhaveri organised the 2018 Roof Commission, Huma Bhabha: We Come in Peace, and curated Phenomenal Nature: Mrinalini Mukherjee at the Met Breuer in 2019.