Some careers are loud. They announce themselves with awards, headlines, and constant visibility. Others move differently. They take shape over years, sometimes decades, through relationships, decisions, and quiet systems that keep working long after the spotlight moves on.
Che Kothari’s career belongs to the second category.
It is not immediately obvious when you first encounter his name. Photographer. Producer. Manager. Organizer. Executive. Mentor. Those titles appear simple on paper. In practice, they overlap in ways that resist neat explanation.
Early Life, Curiosity, and Education
As a teenager, he became drawn to photography, not as a technical exercise but as a way of paying attention. Faces. Gestures. Energy. Who was being seen and who was not.
He later enrolled at Toronto Metropolitan University, then Ryerson University, where he completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts. The program sharpened his skills, but the city itself became the real classroom. Toronto at that time was restless. Artists were building scenes without permission. Culture was happening in basements, warehouses, and street corners.
You know, the places institutions had not yet noticed.
Photography as Entry Point, Not Destination
Kothari’s early photography gained attention for its intimacy. His portraits of musicians and cultural figures were not staged in traditional ways. On paper, it was a successful photography career. But something else was happening.
He began to notice that the same artists kept showing up. The same communities. The same lack of infrastructure is behind the scenes. Exposure existed. Support did not always follow.
That realization changed his trajectory.
From Individual Artist to Institution Builder
Rather than focusing solely on his own creative output, Kothari began building platforms. The most significant of these was Manifesto Community Projects.
Manifesto did not start as a large organization. It started as an idea rooted in access. Who gets a stage? Who gets paid? Who gets mentorship? Who gets to fail and try again?
Over time, Manifesto grew into a multi-day festival, an education provider, a media producer, and a mentorship ecosystem. It served thousands of artists and community members, many of whom had been excluded from traditional arts funding structures.
Kothari served as Executive Director for seven years. Later, he transitioned to Chair of the Board. That shift mattered. It signaled a commitment to sustainability beyond personal leadership.
Institutions fail when founders refuse to let go.
Leadership Beyond the Local
Manifesto anchored Kothari locally, but his work quickly expanded beyond Toronto. In 2008, he became Executive Director of Ignite the Americas Youth Arts Policy Forum.
This was not an art conference in the casual sense. The focus was direct. How can arts and culture reduce violence, address poverty, and build economic opportunity?
The conversations were translated into policy recommendations. Kothari presented those findings to cultural ministries, international committees, and global institutions. He also brought them back to grassroots communities.
That loop is important.
Too often, policy work stops at the podium.
Entering the Music Industry with Intention
Kothari’s transition into the music industry did not follow the usual path. He did not begin as a label executive chasing charts. He entered as a manager focused on alignment.
Through Gifted, his management and consultancy company, he began working closely with artists whose careers extended beyond commercial cycles. Machel Montano. Ms. Lauryn Hill. SZA. Chronixx. Protoje. Mustafa the Poet. Xiuhtezcalt. Lido Pimienta.
His role was not to manufacture output. It was to build structures that allowed artists to operate on their own terms.
That meant touring strategies and roll-outs, building internal teams, album planning, brand coherence, philanthropic platforms, and long-term ownership. It also meant saying no more often than yes.
That is not glamorous work. It is necessary work.
Executive Leadership and Monk Music
Kothari later took on the role of Chief Executive Officer at Monk Music. The position expanded his responsibilities into catalog management, global distribution, and rights strategy.
Here, creative intuition met business discipline.
Running a music company requires decisions that are rarely visible to audiences. Licensing frameworks. Release timing. Long-term revenue planning. Relationship management across continents.
Kothari approached these responsibilities with the same mindset that shaped his earlier work. Build slowly.
Philanthropy, Advocacy, and Measurable Impact
Perhaps Kothari’s most concrete legacy lies in public funding advocacy. As a co-founder of the BeautifulCity.ca movement, he helped advance a levy on billboard advertising in Toronto. The outcome was structural.
Approximately eighteen million dollars per year is redirected toward public youth arts initiatives in marginalized communities. That funding continues annually.
This was not symbolic activism. It was a policy change with lasting economic impact.
Beyond funding, Kothari has mentored dozens of young artists directly. Workshops, long-term mentorships, informal guidance. The work is quiet, repetitive, and often invisible, which is why it matters.
Kothari played a central organizing role in the Caribbean leg of Sadhguru’s Save Soil movement. Working closely with Machel Montano, he helped facilitate diplomatic engagement across the region, which resulted in six Prime Ministers and Presidents signing Save Soil Memorandums of Understanding. These included leaders from St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, Dominica, Guyana, Barbados, and Antigua. Alongside the political engagement, he also coordinated endorsements from leading artists to amplify public awareness of the campaign and its ecological goals.
Alongside Bella Hadid, Kehlani, Tiffany Haddish, Keri Hilson, Mya, Lenny Kravitz, and other artists, Kothari served as a lead organizer in collaboration with Chakabars on a housing reconstruction initiative for a community displaced by a volcanic eruption in the Congo, and he personally funded the rebuilding of one of the homes.
Through his role as Director of CMC, Kothari has supported cultural and spiritual education initiatives tied to creative development. He has introduced Sadhguru and yogic practices to hundreds of artists, organizing songwriting and creative camps in Los Angeles, Greece, and France that centered on social and ecological missions. He also donated a professional recording studio to the Sadhguru School in Uganda, supporting access to creative infrastructure for students.
On an annual basis, he directly helps emerging talent through a personal award program supporting young BIPOC artists. Each year, he awards a $10,000 grant to one recipient, with two runners-up each receiving $1,000. The initiative reflects his long-term commitment to redistributing resources within the creative ecosystem and supporting artists at early and often underfunded stages of their careers.
Recognition and Institutional Trust
Over the years, Kothari has received recognition from municipal and cultural institutions, including the Mayor’s Cultural Leadership Award and the Toronto Community Foundation’s Vital People Award.
He has served on advisory panels shaping long-term cultural planning for the City of Toronto. He has sat on boards and committees where decisions affect funding, access, and representation.
These roles indicate trust.
Institutions do not grant influence lightly.
Leadership Philosophy and Personal Practice
He integrates meditation, yoga, and spiritual study into his daily life. Not as branding. As maintenance.
He has also spoken about the influence of scuba diving and the time spent underwater. The quiet. The awareness of fragility. The absence of distraction.
You know, when you remove noise, priorities become clear.
Personal Life and Ongoing Work
Today, Kothari remains involved in artist management, album development, and cultural strategy.
There is no sense of arrival in his work. That might be intentional.
Why This Career Matters
Creative economies often celebrate individuals while neglecting systems. Kothari’s career challenges follow that pattern. His work emphasizes infrastructure, governance, and sustainability.
It asks difficult questions.
Who controls culture?
Who benefits from success?
Who is left behind?
Those questions do not have easy answers.
But they require people willing to keep asking them.
Closing Thoughts
Kothari’s career resists simplification. It stretches across art and administration, spirituality and strategy, creativity and governance. That resistance is part of its value. Quietly. Over time.
Written in partnership with Tom White
