Businesswoman-cum-musician Chandrika Tandon among New York attendees to meet PM Modi

During his state visit to the United States between June 21 and 24, which will start with a touchdown at New York in the wee hours (Indian time) of Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to meet a least two dozen eminent people including Nobel laureates, economists, artistes, scientists, scholars, entrepreneurs, academicians and health sector experts, according to news reports.

Among them is Indian-American businesswoman, philanthropist and musician Chandrika Tandon. Though not as popular as her sister Indra Nooyi, former chairman and chief executive officer of PepsiCo, Tandon is a prominent philanthropist and patron of music and performing arts.

According to sources, Chandrika and her husband Ranjan Tandon will host PM Modi in New York City.

Born Chandrika Krishnamurthy, she grew up in Chennai, along with her sister Indra and went to Holy Angels Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School. Later she graduated from Madras Christian College and IIM, Ahmedabad.

Tandon has been a member of the board of directors at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City and Berklee Presidential Advisory Council of the Berklee College of Music. The Berklee-Tandon Global Clinics, of which she is the founder, is known for its activities in supporting contemporary music training globally. A talented composer and vocalist herself, Tandon has released four music albums, earning a Grammy nomination for Soul Call.

She runs Soul Chants Music, a nonprofit music label, and was a trustee of American India Foundation, a prominent philanthropic organisation set up between 2005 and 2011.

In 2015, Tandon and her husband Ranjan, an Indian-American engineer-turned-investor, donated $100 million for engineering at New York University. The gift, which is believed to be among the largest donations to education by members of the Indian-American community, was principally to support faculty hiring and academic programmes and to build on the engineering school’s cross-disciplinary innovation and entrepreneurship, and achieve new levels of academic excellence in engineering. It was renamed the NYU Tandon School of Engineering in recognition of the Tandons’ generosity.

As the chairman of the board of NYU Tandon School of Engineering, Chandrika is a champion of STEM education. She is also a member of the board of overseers of the NYU Stern Business School, a member of the board of trustees of the NYU Langone Medical System and leads the NYU President’s Global Council.

She was also the first Indian-American woman to become a partner at McKinsey and Company, and now she is the chair of Tandon Capital Associates, a financial advisory firm she founded in 1992.

Her husband is an engineer from IIT-Kanpur and a graduate of the Harvard Business School. He is founder and chair of Libra Advisors, a hedge fund he founded in 1990 that is now a family office.

Tandon also oversees the Krishnamurthy Tandon Foundation which has made leadership gifts to the Harvard Business School and Yale University; Ranjan is a board member.