Ravi S. Rajan is the president of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Having studied music and
worked with time-based and interactive media since 1993, he is an artist and producer whose work reaches
across disciplines. Ravi is also a teacher and a leader with a reputation for developing innovative and
visionary initiatives.
Before CalArts, Ravi lived in New York City for 18 years. He held multiple leadership roles at Purchase
College, State University of New York (SUNY Purchase), his final six there as Dean overseeing the six arts
divisions, taught students from kindergarten through university at various institutions, and worked with
faculty and artists on multimedia projects at Yale University and The Rockefeller University.
Ravi has degrees from Yale University and the University of Oklahoma and was elected a Fellow of the Royal
Society of the Arts (UK) in 2010. He serves on, and has led as chair, various boards supporting democracy,
social justice, diversity, the arts, and education worldwide. He was a member of the TONY Awards
Nominating Committee, and serves on many other selection groups that provide assistance, scholarship,
fellowships, and recognition to artists and arts organizations.
He and his wife, opera music director and language specialist Lucy Tucker Yates, live in Los Angeles with
their two school-age sons.