Vasan was born into a poor family of six and raised in a small town in Maharashtra, India. Extremes characterized his childhood. On the one hand, was the poverty in which he was raised and the absence of a healthy father, who died after a prolonged illness when Vasan was thirteen. On the other, however, he had a loving and spiritual mother, Rukki, who provided him with a safe emotional umbrella and a grandmother who gave him unconditional support.

 

The difficult circumstances of his youth created an intense drive to be successful and competitive. His keen intellect and drive enabled him to excel in school and obtain an Electrical Engineering degree from a prestigious institution in India (he later obtained an MBA from Duke University in the USA).

 

He arrived in the USA shortly after finishing his undergraduate studies in India and experienced professional success very quickly.  He was promoted rapidly to become a senior executive at a young age.  His success could be attributed to his natural ability to quickly zero in on the core issue in problem-solving, his ability to offer a creative solution, and his aggressive execution of the solution.  These traits allowed him to excel at turning around problem situations – early on in turning around projects and stagnant accounts to later turning around businesses.

 

He held key executive positions around the world working for large global corporations such as FIS, EDS, Capgemini, and smaller organizations such as Kanbay, Birlasoft, and Virtusa, leading business units and sales organizations.  During this time, he prospected and closed deals ranging from a few million to multi-billion dollars in size (LinkedIn profile) and he managed large global teams as part of the businesses he built.  His leadership style evolved over the years to focus on personally coaching his teams toward higher performance rather than directing them and thus created highly productive and loyal employees.

 

While he was professionally experiencing success by aggressively pursuing corporate goals and delivering impressive financial results, he was searching personally to find meaning in his work and life. His journey of self-discovery was accelerated when he was diagnosed with an auto-immune disorder (VKH) that left him blind for a period, intensifying his search for purpose and meaning. He was fortunate to work with great doctors and influential coaches who helped him emerge with an understanding of himself at a deeper emotional level.  In addition, this work gave him further keen insights into his behavior patterns that helped him develop into an empathetic leader. 

 

These varied experiences coupled with extensive reading of wisdom literature rounded out Vasan's evolution from an aggressive go-getter, who accomplished results at any cost, to a leader who began leading with empathy and a complete understanding of what motivates people. He began working on a framework to help future leaders achieve their true potential without compromising their ideals.  He experimented with and perfected this framework while he was still leading businesses before he decided to start a full-time coaching career.

 

Vasan's vision and optimistic hope for the future are that every one of the executives he coaches will continue the tradition of leading by coaching their colleagues, which in turn will create a significant change in the business world.