Anmol Vellani is the Director of the India Foundation for the Arts, an independent philanthropic organization, since 1995. He served as a Program Officer in the New Delhi office of the Ford Foundation from 1986-1995 and was responsible for grantsmaking in the performing arts, folklore and classical learning.
He served as co-chair of the Conference of Asian Foundations and Organisations and sits on the Advisory Council of the Asia Society India Centre, and also on the India Advisory Committee of the Resource Alliance, amongst others. Anmol has written on a range of subjects – including the arts and religion, corporate patronage, arts entrepreneurship, the role of foundations, intercultural dialogue, and arts philanthropy and the law. He has helped to design courses on the arts and management, served as faculty for training workshops in grant making, and used theatre methods to conduct creativity workshops. He studied philosophy at the Universities of Poona, Oxford and Cambridge, and taught at Elphinstone College, Mumbai, in the 1970s. He has directed theatre productions in different languages and locations, both in India and abroad, over the last 35 years.