After graduating from Harvard College, she worked for
Boston Consulting Group and completed her MBA at Harvard Business School. She briefly worked as an analyst at
Chase Capital Partners before joining
Lone Pine Capital as a founding partner in 1998. Gaonkar worked there as a portfolio manager for 23 years. In 2022, she left Lone Pine Capital and started SurgoCap Partners, a hedge fund which was launched on January 3, 2023, managing $1.8 billion. This was the largest-ever debut of a hedge fund run by a woman. By 2024, SurgoCap had grown its assets to over $3 billion. The fund's diverse portfolio includes major tech stocks like
Nvidia, along with significant holdings in companies such as healthcare conglomerate
McKesson and energy firm
GE Vernova. Additionally, SurgoCap participated in
Figma's fundraising round in 2024, following the collapse of Figma's acquisition by
Adobe in late 2023. As an author, she collaborated with
David Byrne in 2016 to create a guided
immersive theater performance, "Theater of the Mind". She is a published short story writer and was nominated for a
Pushcart Prize. She is a member of the boards of directors of Surgo Ventures and Surgo Health and a trustee of
Tate Foundation and the
Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. She previously served as a trustee of Ariadne Labs,
Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI),
RAND, and as a member of Harvard's Global Advisory Council. ==Personal life==