About

Neeraja Ganesh is a TEDx Speaker and a passionate advocate for bringing about a positive mindset shift among women and students through her interactions with them. She currently heads the Education Initiatives at Aspire For Her, an organization with a vision to impact 1 million+ women and add 5B$ to India’s GDP through increased participation of women in the workforce by 2025. Neeraja believes that mentorship is crucial in the development and growth of individuals and is a mentor on various platforms. She also conducts training programs on leadership and behaviors. Neeraja has had a successful career in the Information Technology industry managing large teams, delivery of IT projects, operational excellence, and customer delight for large banking captives for 25 years. She switched her career to work in the space of gender diversity and has since made a significant impact in this field. Prior to her current role, Neeraja served as the Director – Relationships at National Education Society of Karnataka, where she worked closely with industry veterans to build the industry-academia connect to ensure the curriculum of the institutions was relevant to the current and future industry needs. She has also headed the JobsForHer Foundation, which was set up to bridge gender gaps in India. Neeraja has been invited by prestigious forums like Lean in, IEEE, PMI, TIE, NASSSCOM across the globe to deliver talks on a variety of topics. She has also written articles on many platforms and has been featured via chat shows and podcasts to understand her leadership mantra. Neeraja has received several awards, including the TEDx Women award by the Dayananda Sagar Institutions in 2017, the JobsForHer HerRising award in the Women Professionals category in 2019, the HerRising Award in the Women in Education category, and the Women’s Web Orange Flower Award for Writing on Women at Work in 2020, and the HerRising Award in the Women in Impact category in 2021. Neeraja is currently writing her first book titled “You Have Arrived: no glass ceilings, no broken rungs, no glass cliffs,” which will be a big influence on the readers, especially young girls and women, in terms of navigating their life and career successfully. She has been featured as one of the 40 women who have traversed their life journeys from ordinary to extraordinary in the book Magical 40 @ 40. In her current role at Aspire For Her, Ne