Board
Board Chair: Melindah Sharma
President: Dr. Diana Wong
Members: S M Raju, Dr. Aparna Sindhoor, Dr. Smitha Radhakrishnan, Nanditha Yelamanchi
Intern: Anika Mahajan
Melindah Sharma - Board Chairperson, Melindah serves as an Advisor and Board Director for biotechs, digital health and healthcare systems. Responsible for the vision, strategy and best practices, she is accountable for commercialization, operations and talent. Most recently, she led a matrixed, global team at JNJ to define key capabilities, transforming Program and Portfolio Management for capital and asset management. Bearing 25 years of leadership experience in pharma, medical devices, consumer goods and social enterprises, Melindah thrives in scaling and building healthcare organizations to serve those in need. A doting mother of three, Melindah has a passion for the arts and empowering women and children. Having served numerous non profits, she has been the recipient of the Creating a Voice Leadership award, a founder of the South Asian Coalition against Violence, and the Honorary Chair for the annual Butterfly Ball for the Women's Resource Center where she was once a resident. A member of Chief, she was raised in Rhode Island. Melindah is a graduate of Harvard University and resides in New Jersey.
President: Diana J. Wong is the President of Navarasa Dance Theater. She seeks to leverage social artistry for effecting grassroots changes related to women, environmental sustainability, economic development, leadership development, and career transitions. She is actively involved with different non-profit organizations. Diana serves on three additional boards with one role as a Treasurer. Previously, she also served as President of the Ann Arbor chapter of the American Society for Training and Development where she rebuilt the board to support the successful development of the professional non-profit association for corporate trainers and consultants. She received her PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; an MBA from Dalhousie University, and a Bachelor of Home Economics from University of British Columbia. Currently, Diana teaches at Eastern Michigan University and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her husband, Wayne Millette and family.
Founder/Artistic Director: Dr. Aparna Sindhoor is a choreographer, director, performer and teacher. Critics have hailed Sindhoor as a powerful voice for creating contemporary works of extraordinary artistry and works that challenge the boundaries of traditional Indian dance, yet contribute to strengthening that tradition. She has created more than fifteen contemporary dance theater works that have been performed at venues and festivals, including Lincoln Center, Jacob’s Pillow, La MaMa, Asian American Theater Festival, New Haven Festival of Arts and Ideas, World Social Forum, New World Theatre, USA; Teesri Duniya Theatre (Montreal, Canada); Ragayana and Amol Palekhar’s Theater Festival, India. She has choreographed for films and television and for a circus show created by Franco Dragone in Germany. She was the artist in residency at the prestigious Bates Dance Festival, at Brandeis University and Boston Center for the Arts. Sindhoor trained in the Mysore style of Bharatanatyam for more than fifteen years with legendary teacher, Dr. K. Venkatalakshamma (Mysore palace dancer). She has trained in yoga, martial arts, contemporary, aerial dance, music and theater for more than a decade. Her current work has synthesized these distinct art forms into a unified whole. She is a Gold Medalist in Dance from Mysore University and she has a PhD in Dance, Cultural and Women’s Studies from Boston University. She is the founder and artistic director of Navarasa Dance Theater.
www.navarasa.org
Co-Founder and Co-Director: S M Raju (Rajendran Meena Sivasankaran) has a computer science bachelors from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India and did his graduate studies at Umass, Amherst. He worked as a senior researcher in Verizon Labs and then went on to start Knumi, a venture funded startup in 2000 that developed cutting edge video search and voice based search technologies. He has two US patents to his credit. His passion for film and theater led him to write, direct and produce several theater works for Navarasa Dance Theater. He has produced TV shows, films, children’s animation content and over 120 educational videos for school children for the government of Tamilnadu, India. He is also a multiple winner of the James Baldwin playwright award. He was one of the executive producers of Anandabhadram, a Malayalam feature film (anandhabhadram.com). His critically acclaimed directorial debut film Varnam (varnamthefilm.com) was released in theatres in India in 2011 and was officially selected for the London Asian Film Festival 2011, Montreal World Film Festival 2011, Chennai International Film Festival 2011, Norway Tamil Film Festival 2012, the Newyork Indian Film Festival 2012 and the Roxbury International Film Festival 2012.
Member: Dr. Smitha Radhakrishnan is Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College and a lifelong Bharatanatyam dancer. A member of Navarasa's performing company since 2008, Smitha has a passion for creating art that can serve as a powerful vehicle of social transformation. She has performed with the company in "Story and a Song," "Encounter," and "Snake and Ladder," among other productions. Smitha has served on the Board since 2011. As the founder-director of NATyA Dance in Natick, MA, Smitha teaches Bharatanatyam to students of all ages and directs a dance collective that choreographs new, community-inspired dance offerings for local audiences.
Nanditha Rao Yelamanchi is an accomplished HR leader with several years of experience as Head of HR in various roles across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Nanditha is a trusted advisor to C-suite business and HR leaders. Drawing from her industry experience across consumer products, pharmaceuticals & biotech, and strategic HR leadership in steady state, turnaround, startup, and M&A situations, Nanditha brings comprehensive HR strategy and implementation experience to her work. She works extensively in the areas of executive talent & leadership development, coaching, succession planning, organization-wide change management, employee engagement, restructuring, mergers & divestitures, and development of strategic compensation and rewards strategies. Outside of her work Nanditha is a singer and has been learning dance with Navarasa since 2009 and currently serves on their board. She strongly believes in Navarasa’s mission that we need more Art to make our world a compassionate place and that it is not a privilege for a few but a necessity for all.
Supporting Intern: Anika Mahajan, a senior attending Middlesex County Academy for Allied Health & Biomedical Sciences, thrives in settings where she can help individuals from all walks of life, with a passion for driving healthcare equity and social justice. As a student of classical Indian dance, and more contemporary fusion styles since she was 10 years old, Anika uses the medium to express her creativity and passion for the arts.