Paul Trapani Anula Jayasuriya & David Gilmour

David Gilmour: A.B. 1980–82, S.M. 1982, MBA 1984. President and CEO, Tacit Software.
Anula Jayasuriya: A.B. 1980, M.D. 1984–89, Ph.D. 1991, MBA 1993. Managing Partner, Evolvence India Life-Science Fund.

David Gilmour and Anula Jayasuriya have spent their lives transcending boundaries—between countries, between fields of study, and between aspiration and achievement. Their own partnership began two decades ago, and while who approached whom remains a topic of debate, both remember Gilmour saying, “You must be from Sri Lanka.” He swears it was a guess, but after a wide-ranging conversation peppered with both spousal endearments and good-natured rivalry, it’s hard to believe that either of these erudite entrepreneurs leaves much to chance.

Jayasuriya arrived at Harvard as a transfer from Georgetown to study premed in 1977. Isolated from friends and family in Sri Lanka during the technological dark ages before cell phones or e-mail, she threw herself into her studies.

“I was very aware of being an immigrant and having something to prove,” she recalls as she sits in the living room of the couple’s Los Altos Hills, Calif., home, surrounded by artwork and mementos from their extensive foreign travels. “I had picked this goal of an M.D./Ph.D., and that was my whole focus.”

Gilmour, on the other hand, migrated from Andover along with 43 of his fellow graduates. An engineering and applied physics major, he had learned to fly in high school and spent his summers as a pilot for Nantucket Aviation, “just like the TV show Wings,” he says.

Today, Gilmour is a visionary of the “Why didn’t I think of that?” school. Tacit Software, which he founded in 1997, is transforming information management with new tools that connect people and ideas within an organization. Tacit’s ActiveNet software searches employees’ e-mail and documents to learn what they’re interested in, then hooks them up with coworkers who have similar profiles. The eureka wrinkle is the application’s ability to protect privacy while enabling collaboration, according to Gilmour, who holds more than a dozen patents related to the process. Tacit recently launched Illumio, an online service that enables individuals to leverage the same technology.

Gilmour started on the path to Silicon Valley stardom as an undergrad in Winthrop House. Jayasuriya was up the street in Dunster, yet the couple didn’t meet until the mid–’80s, when they crossed paths at the home of mutual friends Linda Berzin and Michel Karma.

“Harvard forms a very important basis for our marriage—” Jayasuriya begins.

“—considering that we came together from halfway around the world,” Gilmour, 48, finishes her thought.

“In the early days, we felt like we knew each other a lot better than we actually did,” Jayasuriya, 49, continues. “We had experienced so many big events in the same place, at the same time, even though we didn’t know each other yet.”

They juggled diverse careers after wedding ceremonies in Sri Lanka and, in June 1988, at Harvard’s Memorial Church. Gilmour worked at Lotus Development while Jayasuriya completed Harvard Medical School. Then, in 1991, Gilmour was offered a job in Silicon Valley.

As Gilmour remembers it, “Anula had applied to HBS directly out of medical school and I, in a sort of superior way, tried to gently explain that they liked people with work experience and she was unlikely to get in. So we made our plans to move.”

They both chuckle as Jayasuriya explains that no sooner had the couple settled into their West Coast home than she received a telltale fat envelope bearing the HBS logo. She was in.

Gilmour told his new bosses, “I can work on either coast, but Harvard’s only on one, so we’ve got to leave.” His supervisor offered a compromise. Thus began 18 months of bicoastal commuting, which ended with the 1992 birth of their daughter, Shanika, at Children’s Hospital Boston, where Jayasuriya had interned as a pediatrician.

Since then, Jayasuriya, has used her science and business background at venture capital firms and drug companies, including Skyline Ventures and Hoffman–La Roche. Recently she helped found the Evolvence India Life-Science Fund, a groundbreaking private equity fund investing in Indian pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

“David and Anula look at company formation through different lenses but often face similar challenges,” says longtime friend Paul Maeder. “He’s an entrepreneur and she’s an investor. Yet they have a nice way of challenging each other’s thinking and assumptions in a way that feels supportive and makes both of them take their thinking to the next level.”

That cooperative spirit infuses their family life as well. While Jayasuriya flies back and forth to India every five or six weeks, Gilmour holds down the fort at home.

“Of course I miss my family,” she says. “But David and Shanika are much more focused on hearth and home. I’m a nomad at heart. I have a sense of home in many places.”

Including Harvard.

Profile by Tara Leonard