Gowri Natarajan Sharma is the First Person of Color to Be President of Board of Trustees of Dallas Museum of Art
- Also appointed is engineer Venugopal Menon as the secretary of DMA.
Indian American Gowri Natarajan Sharma has been named president of the Board of Trustees at the Dallas Museum of Art. She became the first person of color to chair the board in the institution’s 119-year history. She Sharma succeeds Catherine Marcus Rose in her role as President of the Board of Trustees.
DMA also appointed an Indian American engineer Venugopal Menon as secretary.
Natarajan Sharma, who joined the museum board of trustees in 2017 previously served on the executive committee as vice president. She was co-chair of the Strategic Planning Committee and chaired the Learning & Engagement Committee. She currently serves on the Building & Grounds Committee and is a member of the DMA Acquisition Fund created by the Dallas Art Fair.
A founding board member of UNICEF North Texas and Central Plains Region, she has been an executive member of the Orchid Giving Circle at Texas Women’s Foundation (TXWF) and will be on the executive board and Programs Committee chair at TXWF in the coming year.
Additionally, she is chair of the Construction Committee and an executive committee member at The Lamplighter School. She currently sits on the Advisory Board of talkStem.
She holds a Master’s in Architecture and serves as an architectural advisor for her family’s business interests.
Menon retired from Texas Instruments in 2019 after a 24-year career as Vice President of Technology. At DMA, he served in a wide variety of roles on the Board of Trustees since 2009, including as a member of the Budget & Finance Committee and as treasurer from 2014 to 2015. He currently serves on the Executive and Investment Committees and is chair of the Marketing Committee. He is a member of the executive board of the Lyle School of Engineering at SMU. He succeeds Peggy Sewell in the role of Secretary.