Neeraja Ganesh is the Director – Relationships at National Education Society of Karnataka, which has 17 institutions under it, National College being one of them, where she works closely with the industry veterans to build the industry academia connect. Her focus is to ensure the curriculum of the institutions is relevant to the current and future industry needs. She is also a freelance consultant, who conducts various training programs and workshops on leadership and behaviours. She also coaches people to progress in their careers.
Prior to this role, Neeraja Ganesh’s professional experience of 25 years has been in the Information Technology industry managing large teams, delivery of IT projects, Operational excellence and customer delight for large banking captives.
She has mentored and coached new leaders, first time leaders to understand their leadership style, and utilise their strengths to grow themselves and their teams. She has a very strong inclination to get the women of our country have a positive mindset, become confident and go all out to reach their potential. With this intent, she has driven Diversity and Inclusion programs in her organisations and also, volunteered and mentored outside her organisations to support this cause.
She decided to switch her career to work in the space of gender diversity after having mentored women from diverse experiences, age groups, industries and domains, to help them grow in their careers. She was heading the JobsForHer Foundation which was been setup to bridge the gender gaps in the country.
She has been invited by various forums across India to deliver talks on a variety of topics with the intent to inspire, educate and transform mindsets of the audiences. Her sessions on “Networking for Results”, “Personal Branding”, “Work Life Integration”, “Women and the Glass Ceiling” have been extremely well received every time she has delivered it, especially to an audience of women. In a pursuit to reach larger audiences, she has started writing articles and has also been featured via chat shows and podcasts to understand her leadership mantra which has helped her, her teams, and the organisations that she has worked with reach their goals. She has also been invited to review books of leading authors, one of them being Ms. Apurva Purohit(President Jagran Prakashan)’s book titled “Lady You’re the Boss”. She has also been on the jury panel for many “Innovation” Competitions including the MIT Sloan School of Management, USA’s Inclusive Innovation Challenge.
She was awarded at a TEDx Women event organised by the Dayananda Sagar Institutions for her 25 years of achievements in the corporate world in 2017. She also received the JobsForHer HerRising award in the Women Professionals category in 2019 for her contributions to the work of gender diversity, helping bridge the gender gap in the country. She also received the Women’s Web Orange Flower Award for Writing on Women at Work.
She volunteers as a mentor at JobsForHer and Aspire for Her foundation. She is a core team volunteer at Hope works foundation. She is also part of the Women Leadership and Expert Empowerment committee at Bangalore Chamber of Industries and Commerce.