Ms. Aparna Nair
Chief Executive Officer
Aparna Nair is the CEO and a founding member of Kautilya Leadership Centre (KLC) which she has helped build from the ground up since 2016. She has over 25 years of cross-functional experience spanning financial services, logistics and running her own consulting practice. Aparna brings depth to her work that comes from having led from the front across sales, credit operations, branch management, and people practices prior to transitioning into learning and leadership consulting.
Aparna works at the intersection of leadership, culture, and organisational performance. She advises Boards and Management Committees on building leadership pipelines and bench strength. She designs bespoke interventions for CXO and senior leadership cohorts across industries. Her consulting practice spans cultural alignment, performance management, talent assessment, leadership development & mentoring, all of which is aligned to the business strategy.
She is a builder of proprietary psychometric tools, a developer of knowledge frameworks from first principles, and a trusted mentor to HR professionals seeking to deepen domain expertise and elevate their strategic contribution within organisations.
Aparna is an accredited facilitator from SMR, Malaysia, a qualified practitioner of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and an experienced user of the OPQ (Occupational Personality Questionnaire) and the Balanced Scorecard framework. Her instructional design background, including e-learning content development, informs the rigour and accessibility of every learning intervention she leads.
At Kautilya, Aparna has worked with leadership teams across pharma, BFSI, manufacturing, retail, electronic payments, automotive, private equity, and start-ups — consistently with industry leaders in each category. Earlier in her career, she held significant roles at ICICI Bank and Blue Dart-FedEx and ran a successful independent consulting practice serving marquee organisations including Godrej & Boyce, ICICI Prudential, NCML, and ThyssenKrupp, among others.
Aparna is also a practising Independent Woman Director, bringing her leadership development lens to board-level governance.
Aparna works at the intersection of leadership, culture, and organisational performance. She advises Boards and Management Committees on building leadership pipelines and bench strength. She designs bespoke interventions for CXO and senior leadership cohorts across industries. Her consulting practice spans cultural alignment, performance management, talent assessment, leadership development & mentoring, all of which is aligned to the business strategy.
She is a builder of proprietary psychometric tools, a developer of knowledge frameworks from first principles, and a trusted mentor to HR professionals seeking to deepen domain expertise and elevate their strategic contribution within organisations.
Aparna is an accredited facilitator from SMR, Malaysia, a qualified practitioner of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and an experienced user of the OPQ (Occupational Personality Questionnaire) and the Balanced Scorecard framework. Her instructional design background, including e-learning content development, informs the rigour and accessibility of every learning intervention she leads.
At Kautilya, Aparna has worked with leadership teams across pharma, BFSI, manufacturing, retail, electronic payments, automotive, private equity, and start-ups — consistently with industry leaders in each category. Earlier in her career, she held significant roles at ICICI Bank and Blue Dart-FedEx and ran a successful independent consulting practice serving marquee organisations including Godrej & Boyce, ICICI Prudential, NCML, and ThyssenKrupp, among others.
Aparna is also a practising Independent Woman Director, bringing her leadership development lens to board-level governance.