Nita M Ambani

Nita Mukesh Ambani is the founder and chairperson of Reliance Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Reliance Industries, and has spent more than two decades on education, sport and rural development in India.

Born in Mumbai and educated at Narsee Monjee College, she trained as a Bharatanatyam dancer and worked as a school teacher before her marriage. Her first large development project came in 1997, when she took charge of building a township at Jamnagar for the employees of Reliance's refinery, a planned settlement for more than 17,000 residents. She went on to found the Dhirubhai Ambani International School in Mumbai.

Reliance Foundation was established in 2010 with Ambani as founder-chairperson, and now works across nine areas: rural transformation, education, health, sport, disaster management, women's empowerment, arts and heritage, environment and animal welfare, and urban renewal. The Foundation reports having reached about 100 million people and covering some 98,000 villages. Through the Mumbai Indians cricket team, which she co-owns, she leads Education and Sports for All, which has reached more than 100,000 children from poor households. In 2022 she launched Her Circle, a digital platform for women, and in 2023 the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in Mumbai, which alongside its theatres runs school and college outreach, awards for arts teachers, guru-shishya residencies and art literacy programmes for adults.

She was elected to the International Olympic Committee in August 2016, the first Indian woman member. She received the Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Award from the President of India in 2017 for support of Indian sport.[2][3]