A little bit about my life
I’m semi-private and semi-vulnerable online. So, whilst I’m not forthcoming with every personal detail of my life as it is, here’s a broad overview of my origin story as of October 2023.
In the aftermath of communal and political turmoil, in the mid 80s, my family migrated from Punjab, India to Sydney, Australia. As was the case for many young migrant parents, they came with little money and possessions, and some simple dreams of a safer and more peaceful life for themselves and their children.
Growing up as a cross-cultural, multilingual kid had many benefits: I dealt with identity crises, emotional and physical bullying at school, and a couple of family tragedies thrown into the mix at a young age.
At the age of sixteen I lost my mother under spontaneous, unforeseen and tragic circumstances.
Whilst it may seem facetious to call any of those experiences “benefits” – and I certainly didn’t appreciate them as such at the time – in retrospect, learning to overcome them has been just as significant in contributing to my success, and my ability to be of service to others, as my education and training.
In 2007 I graduated from University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) with a Bachelor of Business and a Bachelor of Medical Science, specialising and focusing on Human Resource Management, Organisational Culture, Neuroscience and Behavioural Psychology.
There were many clues pointing towards where I am now, but I decided instead to pursue graduate education and training to become a medical doctor.
Despite the abundant accolades and encouragement I received for the career path I had found myself on, I never quite shook the feeling that it was laden with land-mines that had my name on it. Only a few months into my first year, one of those mines exploded and I ended up in hospital as a patient.
Enduring some truly awful months of mysterious and painful symptoms finally led me to the operating theatre, for a supposedly straightforward procedure. Only that the straightforward procedure, a few days later, turned into a haemorrhaging and several hours of bleeding out in an ER, as I patiently waited for the surgeon to arrive and stitch me up again.
Until I crashed.
And then I don’t remember what happened, before waking up a few hours later in a dark hospital room, feeling completely disoriented and alone. I had spent the past couple of hours under general anaesthetic, and I was slowly remembering how I had ended up there.
During the subsequent months of recovery, I struggled to make sense of my decisions and what to do now, having cut short my career in medicine and unsure about what lay ahead. A big decision I was confronted to make was when a trigger-happy doctor advised me to start taking medication to get me out of my slump.
I’m not all-out anti-psychiatric medication but having seen many examples of people going down a complicated abyss of managing the side-effects and other variables, I knew I wanted to avoid it at all costs. And that meant I had to take massive responsibility for my life again.
I re-ventured deep into the world of personal development, spirituality, behavioural psychology, human motivation and personal transformation. I read dozens of books and hundreds of papers, studied countless philosophers, spiritualists, bio-hackers and invested tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours into trainings and courses.
Perhaps what had the most profound impact though, at least in tying all my studying together, were the mentors and coaches I worked privately with along the way.
It didn’t take me too long - in hindsight anyway - to get an excellent position building the professional capacity of grass-roots organisations in the community services sector. Alongside this continually evolving role, I began getting asked to help more and more social entrepreneurs with their business and marketing strategies, as well as giving talks on branding, marketing, entrepreneurship and more.
Eventually I transitioned to working primarily with entrepreneurs and business owners as an independent consultant, and then built and ran a digital agency for a couple of years, whilst simultaneously embarking on more self-discovery overseas.
And then eventually the urge to explore a different kind of game brought me back home to Sydney to work as an employed consultant with various types of organisations.
With much greater self-awareness, found myself coming back to the for-purpose world, working with the senior leadership of a large national disability and child & family services provider on exciting enterprise transformation initiatives.
Since May 2020, I’ve been primarily working with NSW Government as a professional coach. As part of a Design & Innovation Team, I’ve supported individuals and teams to improve their personal and shared leadership, embrace and embed design thinking and optimise for business agility.
Along the way, this eclectic adventure has taken me to incredibly interesting places around the world like Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Singapore, South East Asia, and more; and I’ve been blessed with some remarkable experiences along the way too, including:
Acting in a feature film
Becoming an exhibited and published photographer
Having spoken to business audiences in over a dozen different cities globally
Advised & coached international VC funded start-ups and social enterprises
Through all of these awesome and diverse experiences, both professional and otherwise, it has become more and more clear to me how an organisation or project’s performance and results are, first and foremost, a direct reflection of the integrity and personal leadership of the people involved.
So, over the past few years in particular, I’ve also been diving even deeper into figuring out what makes exceptional leaders and teams achieve this level of genuine integrity, and how their unique mindset and capabilities translate into real, meaningful and measurable results, whilst getting more and more overall fulfilment in their lives.
I believe the individuals and groups I work with have the inner wisdom to uncover their own challenges and solutions, and can take full control of their journey towards excellence - whatever that means for them. I have some very special skills and tools that help my clients, colleagues, teams and friends tap into their own wisdom to do exactly that.
I'm deeply passionate about using these tools to help people become healthier and more whole versions of themselves, and come together to solve complex challenges to make the world a better place, whilst having a lot of fun along the way.