Raised in India before coming to the U.S. for graduate study, Usha Srinivasan has always carried with her a deep appreciation for cultural richness and connection. After earning her MBA, she built a successful 15-year career in Silicon Valley, leading product teams in an era of rapid growth and innovation. By 2012, however, she was ready for a new direction. Inspired by studying classical Indian dance with her daughter, she began to see the arts as a powerful means to explore identity, strengthen community, and create a greater sense of belonging.
That vision became Mosaic America, a nonprofit that provides an innovative platform for co-creating world-class multicultural music and dance performances. It brings artists from different traditions together to collaborate on new work — pairing Indian and Mexican folk dancing, for example, or exploring traditional doll-making across cultures. In partnership with San José State University, Mosaic also maintains Mosaic Atlas, an expansive survey and interactive map of assets rooted in culturally distinct communities of Silicon Valley. With Usha at the helm, Mosaic has delivered programming in six Bay Area cities, featuring over 250 artists from more than 60 traditions and reaching more than 50,000 people. “Artists make tremendous cultural ambassadors,” she explains. “It’s what we create together when we come together that is glorious and all-American.”
Beyond Mosaic, Usha is a senior fellow at the American Leadership Forum Silicon Valley, sits on the boards of California for the Arts and California Arts Advocates, and was featured in De.Coded, a multimedia exploration of 101 Silicon Valley changemakers. She also served as cultural commissioner for the City of Santa Clara from 2015 to 2022. At the GSB Asian Leadership Conference in 2024, Usha shared her journey of transitioning careers to unlock personal fulfillment, financial growth, and cultural enrichment. Kim Chan, MBA ’97, describes her as a “visionary” whose work has helped to “cultivate belonging and foster social cohesion in Silicon Valley through intercultural, co-created art and dialogue.”
