Shanthini Naidoo. / Ishani Duttagupta

Shanthini Naidoo is a fourth-generation person of Indian origin who was born in South Africa and is currently based in Sydney, Australia. As the CEO of the St. Vincent’s Curran Foundation, she leads efforts to bridge government funding gaps for St. Vincent’s hospitals across New South Wales. While her first visit to India was in 2003, her connection to her roots deepened significantly after joining Indiaspora, a global nonprofit of global Indian leaders.

Since the organization launched its Australian operations, Naidoo’s visits to India have become frequent. After attending an Indiaspora event in New Delhi in 2023, she found herself returning to India annually. “I have finally had the opportunity to reconnect with my Indian heritage,” says Naidoo, who recently attended the Indiaspora Forum in Bengaluru. “I’m starting to find myself here every year.”

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She is one of Australia’s most experienced and accomplished leaders in the nonprofit sector and has held many senior positions, including assistant director of the National Gallery of Australia, head of fundraising at Taronga and Western Plains Zoos, and director of development and marketing at the Sydney Opera House. She is also company secretary of the St. Vincent’s Curran Trustee Ltd., which acts as trustee for the JW & M Cunningham Foundation and Alan & Lynne Rydge Foundation. And now, the value of the Indian connections extends beyond personal heritage into her professional leadership. As CEO of the St. Vincent’s Curran Foundation—the fundraising arm of Australia’s largest nonprofit health care system—she has leveraged the Indiaspora network to forge strategic global partnerships. Most notably, it led to a collaboration with the Gupta-Klinsky India Institute at Johns Hopkins University.

“The connection began last year at the Indiaspora Forum for Good in Abu Dhabi and deepened when we met again in Delhi,” Naidoo explains. “Because both organizations share a mission of using philanthropy to drive medical research and improve patient outcomes, a partnership was a natural fit. They also support an impressive range of programs within India.”

Her foundation too supports areas of development, innovation, research programs, patient care programs that go above and beyond the business as usual, says Naidoo, who is head of fundraising efforts to support the vision and mission of St. Vincent’s hospitals to deliver innovative patient care, lead clinical research and support workforce education initiatives. The St. Vincent’s Curran Foundation raises more than $50 million a year through donations and corporate support to enable it to undertake initiatives that are not government funded but ensure better outcomes for patients.

“The Gupta-Klinsky institute brings together on the same platform many institutions and individuals working in India in areas such as public health, infectious diseases and maternal child health. It also helps identify areas where more interdisciplinary programming can be done around climate change, digital health or use of AI and data science in health. The institute brings together people with multiple expertise areas, including students, faculty members and alumni experts, together to solve challenges and to build and execute programs in India. And we see a good fit,” says Naidoo, who has more than 20 years of leadership experience in marketing and fundraising gained through iconic Australian institutions. She adds that it’s an advantage that several members of the Indian diaspora have supported the work of the Gupta-Klinsky institute.

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“And essentially what we are looking to do is develop people-to-people connections with India, to look at opportunities to partner with like-minded organizations around areas that resonate, where we can learn from each other,” says Naidoo about her work at St. Vincent’s Curran Foundation.

And while she finds herself traveling to India more often, she is also proud of the fact that people of Indian origin are set to become the largest diaspora in Australia for the first time. “For the first time, people of Indian origin in Australia will outnumber people born in the U.K. And that’s quite a significant shift,” she says. Naidoo also finds St. Vincent's health institutions and hospitals catering to many more people of Indian origin in their health systems.

She is upbeat about stronger Australia-India ties, especially in the area of sport, including cricket. “We also want that to extend to other areas such as health care and AI, a field in which India is leading the way. In fact, we had a large delegation of our hospital executives come to visit India last year,” says Naidoo, who has actively promoted iconic Australian institutions in the development of the arts, culture and health around the world through international partnerships and as a keynote speaker.

Discover more at New India Abroad.