Who is Mala Gopal Gaonkar? David Byrne marries billionaire ex-wife of Reese Witherspoon’s boyfriend

David Byrne, the former frontman of Talking Heads, has married his fiancée, Mala Gopal Gaonkar, according to a report in People magazine.

She is the founder of SurgoCap Partners, which is an investment firm based in New York. She reportedly started it with $1.8 billion under management. According to a report published in The New Yorker, the couple met through their mutual friend Brian Eno. He is known for producing several Talking Heads records.

The musician announced in September this year that he will be tying the knot that month. He shared the news on his Instagram account and wrote:

“I’m getting married this week and made an almost entirely instrumental playlist while our guests eat an amazing and spicy dinner. My sense is that words and lyrics can be distracting – the ear goes to them, especially if it’s a song one knows.”

Bryne was previously married to Adelle Lutz, an actress and costume designer.

Continue reading to know more details.

Everything we need to know about Mala Gopal Gaonkar

Mala Gopal Gaonkar and David Bryne got engaged around mid-August 2025. However, the exact date of their engagement is not disclosed in the reports.

Bryne subtly announced the news during an interview with The Times, where he referred to her as his “fiancée” for the first time. While discussing the Moisturizing Thing track on his latest album, Who Is The Sky?, he told the outlet:

“My fiancée will sometimes come at me with greasy hands, ready to smear my face. And at one point I thought, ‘What if I wake up and really looked younger?’ But there’s a message, too. About how people judge us by the way we look. You learn a lesson you didn’t expect at the start.”

Mala Gopal Gaonkar was born in the US and raised in Bengaluru, India. She earned her undergraduate degree in economics from Harvard College. She then completed an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Prior to her graduate studies, she was with The Boston Consulting Group, where she devised new product development and marketing strategies for her clients based in the U.S., Indian and Germany.

She also worked as a consultant at the World Bank in Mongolia and as a research analyst with a hedge fund at Templeton Investment Counsel, Inc.

Gaonkar founded the Surgo Foundation in 2015 to invest in AI-powered technology, which helped to solve global health problems. Several years later, she co-founded Surgo Ventures, a non-profit organization. In 2019, she became a portfolio manager at Lone Pine Capital.

Mala Gopal Gaonkar was a member of the Kauffman Fellows Class 2 and served her fellowship under mentor Michael Hannon at JP Morgan Partners in New York, according to the organization’s official page. She is also a founding trustee of Ariadne Labs and a trustee of the Tate Foundation.

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In her spare time, Mala Gopal Gaonkar writes short stories which have featured in Catamaran, Carolina Quarterly, and American Short Fiction.

Her former husband is Oliver Haarmann. They share two sons. He is the founding partner of Searchlight Capital Partners. Haarmann is currently romantically involved with actress Reese Witherspoon.

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