If She Builds It

...they will come to Mumbai. Nita Ambani is shaping her city's future one building at a time.

- MARK ROZZO

"I'm a passionate Indian," Nita Ambani is fond of saying. She has channeled that passion into an ever-expanding array of initiatives, activities, and institutions that are as humanitarian as they are patriotic. Ambani, among other things, is the first Indian to be appointed an honorary trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, and she has sponsored exhibitions there and at the Art Institute of Chicago. She developed India’s professional soccer league and is the first Indian woman to be elected to the International Olympic Committee. She owns the Mumbai Indians, the most successful cricket team in the Indian Premier League. She founded an international school and a nonprofit hospital in Mumbai, each considered the best of its kind in India. Many of these projects, and countless more, fall under the aegis of the Reliance Foundation, which Ambani established in 2010. It is a broad philanthropic effort that has touched millions of lives. Under Ambani’s leadership the foundation has been engaged in everything from rescuing Indian elephants to cultivating world class athletes to fighting the coronavirus pandemic. This month it will unveil what is billed as India’s top cultural and performing arts facility, the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre, in the Bandra Kurla Complex district of Mumbai.