Sunil Madhav Sen Art and Culture Foundation
A foundation that Sharmi Roy founded in 2017 and continues to coach. Created in honour of the artist Sunil Madhav Sen, the foundation supports cultural leaders, artists, and social-sector changemakers through coaching, mentoring, and convening.
Most coaching case studies describe a coach engaged by an organisation. This one is different. This case describes a foundation that the coach herself founded.
The Sunil Madhav Sen Art and Culture Foundation exists because Sharmi Roy saw a gap. Cultural leaders in eastern India, artists building practices outside the gallery and performance circuits, and social-sector changemakers working at the intersection of culture and community had no professional coaching infrastructure available to them. The corporate coaching world did not reach them. The arts funding world supported their work but rarely supported the leaders behind the work.
Sharmi founded the foundation in 2017 to be the structure that supports those leaders. Eight years on, she continues to coach within it.
Coaching for All means building the rooms where coaching happens, when the rooms do not yet exist. This case is what that looks like.
Sunil Madhav Sen (1910 to 1979) was a Bengali artist whose work spans painting, drawing, and graphic arts, and whose life was dedicated to the cultural and artistic life of Kolkata and Bengal more widely. The foundation that bears his name carries his commitment to the arts, the artist's life, and the cultural fabric of the city he lived in.
Naming the foundation after him is a deliberate choice. The work the foundation does is the work he would have recognised as worth doing. Supporting artists. Holding cultural memory. Strengthening the community that makes art possible.
The foundation operates across three areas of work.
Founders of cultural organisations, artistic directors, gallery and venue leaders, and curators carry distinctive weights. They lead institutions whose missions are cultural rather than commercial, often on under-resourced budgets, often without the management training that corporate leaders take for granted. The foundation provides coaching to these leaders at standards equivalent to what they would receive in any executive coaching engagement, but at terms that reflect the economy of the cultural sector.
Working artists, particularly those building careers outside the gallery system or the major performance institutions, receive coaching focused on sustainability, identity, and the practical realities of an artistic livelihood. This work overlaps with the engagement at Odissi Vision and Movement Centre but extends to artists across visual, performing, and literary practice.
The foundation also convenes events, conversations, and partnerships that strengthen the cultural community in eastern India. These events are not commercial. They exist to build the connective tissue that allows cultural practice to flourish.
Sharmi Roy's first life, before her corporate career and before her coaching practice, was as an Odissi dancer, teacher, and art programme manager. The arts have been part of her life from the beginning.
The foundation is the meeting point of her three lives. The artist's sensitivity. The consultant's rigour. The coach's belief in human potential. The work she does through the foundation is the same work she does anywhere else, with the same standard. What is different is the audience. The cultural leaders, the artists, and the social-sector changemakers the foundation serves are people the conventional coaching market does not reach.
Founding the foundation in 2017 was not a strategic move. It was a recognition. If the conviction is that coaching belongs in every room, then somebody has to build the rooms that do not yet exist. The foundation has been one of those rooms, sustained for eight years now, with no funding model behind it other than Sharmi's continuing commitment to the work.
The foundation continues. The work expands as the cultural community discovers it and as more leaders, artists, and changemakers find their way in.
The conventional coaching market did not reach cultural leaders, working artists, or social-sector changemakers in eastern India. So Sharmi built a foundation that does. The conviction is operationalised, not just stated.
Most coaches identify primarily as practitioners. Sharmi's primary identity is also as a practitioner. But when the practice required infrastructure that did not exist, she built it. A coach can build the institutional architecture that the coaching needs, without ceasing to be a coach.
The leaders the foundation serves carry weights as substantial as any corporate executive. The coaching they receive is held to the same standard.
The foundation does not generate revenue for the founder. It exists because the work matters. Coaching for All, when taken seriously, sometimes looks like this. Quiet, sustained, unfunded work that compounds over time. Eight years of it, and counting.
If the conviction is that coaching belongs in every room, then somebody has to build the rooms that do not yet exist. The Sunil Madhav Sen Art and Culture Foundation is one of those rooms.
Whether you lead a corporation, a hospital, or a cultural foundation — the questions of leadership, presence, and legacy are the same. Let's explore what coaching can offer your practice.
