Chief Learning Officer’s “Learning Insights” series is dedicated to showcasing the thoughts and career journeys of chief learning officers and learning executives—the tireless trailblazers who are transforming the landscape of corporate learning and workforce development. In this Q&A series, we garner strategic insights, innovative approaches and challenges overcome from visionary leaders worldwide.
CLO: What initially drew you to a career in learning and development, and how have your experiences evolved over the years?
My journey into learning and development was neither planned nor incremental—it was a pivotal career decision. Early in my career, while working in an IT role, I had the opportunity to meet a chief learning officer, Ed Cohen, whose work deeply inspired me. The breadth of what he was doing—shaping organisational culture, building leadership capability, and driving strategic change through learning—resonated with something I had always been drawn to but had not yet articulated. I reached out to him, pursued an internal job rotation and made the transition from IT to L&D.
That single decision set the trajectory for everything that followed. Over the years, I have had the privilege of working across multiple multinational corporations—setting up, launching and relaunching L&D functions and leading talent and leadership development agendas for organizations ranging from 2,000 to over 20,000 employees. My experience spans geographies—the Asia Pacific, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa—and includes integral roles in shaping Corporate Universities at Mahindra Satyam, Western Union and now TVS Motor Company.
Each of these experiences has reinforced a core belief: Learning, when positioned strategically, is not a support function—it is a transformation engine for the enterprise.
CLO: What key initiatives have you implemented as a learning leader to drive employee development and foster a learning culture?
Two initiatives stand out as defining moments in my career:
- Leading the digital learning transformation at scale during the COVID-19 period, while heading the learning function at CGI for the APAC region—serving over 20,000 employees—there was an urgent need to migrate entirely to digital learning while sustaining a vibrant culture of continuous development. We made a strategic decision to pursue the adoption of a learning experience platform as the centrepiece of this transformation. Through a carefully orchestrated series of change management initiatives—spanning digital adoption, stakeholder engagement and behavioural nudges—we achieved LXP adoption rates exceeding 80 percent, with the average employee investing more than 40 hours per year in structured learning. This was not merely a technology migration; it was a cultural shift in how people experienced and valued learning.
- In my current role at TVS Motor Company—the third-largest two-wheeler company globally—I had the opportunity to establish the Academy for Management and Leadership Excellence, which was founded with a clear strategic mandate: to build a future-ready workforce by creating a robust leadership succession pipeline aligned to the enterprise’s talent architecture. A comprehensive suite of initiatives has been undertaken—from managerial capability development programs to talent-aligned, high-potential leadership development journeys, designed and delivered in partnership with leading business schools in India and globally.
CLO: What is the most impactful learning program you’ve introduced in your organization, and how has it contributed to employee growth and business success?
In my current organization, the most impactful initiative has been our senior leadership development program—Global Programme for Management Development (GPMD)—designed in direct alignment with our leadership succession strategy that creates measurable impact in terms of succession readiness, talent mobility and strategic execution, taking us closer to our enterprise vision.
Delivered in partnership with a leading university in the United States, GPMD is an eight-month hybrid learning journey for senior leaders identified as high-potential. The programme comprises two intensive contact weeks spread apart by six months, during which participants engage in a highly curated, customised curriculum. Between these contact weeks, participants take on real business challenges in the form of Action Learning Projects, each sponsored by a member of the business leadership team. The outcomes of these projects are presented directly to the CXOs of the organization, ensuring that learning translates into enterprise value.
Two elements make this program truly distinctive:
- Purpose-led leadership: A core design principle of GPMD is to develop leaders who lead with purpose—grounded in the values, ethos, and legacy of TVS Motor Company. The program includes a three-day rural immersion—a total immersion in our corporate social responsibility activities—where leaders engage directly with the communities and environments that have shaped our organization’s evolution. This experience deepens their understanding of the value system that underpins everything we do and cultivates a leadership mindset that is anchored in purpose, empathy and societal responsibility. Importantly, these communities also represent a significant segment of our customer base, making the immersion a powerful exercise in market understanding—enabling leaders to appreciate the aspirations, needs, and realities of the customers we serve.
- Disruptive thinking: At the heart of GPMD is a deliberate emphasis on cultivating disruptive thinking—the ability to challenge dominant thinking and reimagine how the organisation creates value. The action learning projects participants undertake are designed around real, future-oriented business challenges—exploring new business models, reimagining customer experiences, accelerating digital transformation or unlocking operational efficiencies at scale. By placing senior leaders at the intersection of academic rigour and live business complexity, the program builds a leadership cadre that does not merely respond to disruption but actively drives it—making learning a direct catalyst for enterprise innovation and strategic differentiation.
Over the past couple of years, this program has been a significant contributor to strengthening the succession pipeline for critical roles across the organization.
CLO: What is a common misconception people might have about the L&D function, and how do you address it?
There are several misconceptions about L&D, but the most persistent one is that it is easy, surface-level work—essentially organizing one-off events. In common parlance, we sometimes hear it described as “song and dance”—a view that L&D exists to energise tired teams or fill time between business cycles. That characterization fundamentally underestimates what learning can and should accomplish.
Having had the opportunity to work with three corporate universities across my career, I can share with conviction that L&D can and should focus on insti
