Khori Dastoor, General Director and CEO of Houston Grand Opera since 2021, is a passionate believer in great art and culture, its power to transform society, and the importance of making it accessible to every member of Houston’s diverse international community. Major achievements during her tenure include a blockbuster 2023-24 season that saw historic growth in audiences, ticket sales, and overall revenue; the season-opening 2023 world premiere of Jake Heggie, Gene Scheer, and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s internationally acclaimed world-premiere opera Intelligence; HGO’s 2022 original production of The Wreckers, a lost masterpiece by Dame Ethel Smyth that had never been staged by a major America opera company; and the 2021 world premiere of Joel Thompson’s The Snowy Day, the first mainstage opera to be livestreamed by HGO in its history. In 2023, Dastoor announced that HGO had secured the largest gift in HGO history—a $22 million commitment from Sarah and Ernest Butler. Dastoor joined HGO from Opera San José, where she served as General Director during a tenure marked by rapid growth of the company’s audience and patron base, unprecedented financial stability, and innovations including a new digital media studio.