A Sparkly Mother-Daughter Duo Who Mentor, Train, and Empower Others
Neeraja Ganesh and Sneha Ganesh have carved unique niches for themselves. They are also known popularly as a mother-daughter duo that share a crackling chemistry. Often working together—at events or on projects—they have learned to draw boundaries and diffuse differences.
The following vignettes were drawn from a free-flowing conversation with both, delving into their journeys and the forging of a singular partnership, filled with plucky revelations and sparky comebacks.
Neeraja Ganesh: From Shy to Self-Assured
Spring boarding from a senior corporate leader into a frequent invitee on panels or global conferences, Neeraja exudes a sureness with words and an enviable self-possession on stage. Incredibly, she was shy and reclusive at school. As the only child from a conservative Tamil-speaking household in Indore, she felt invisible inside an all-girls convent school. Describing herself as “average at studies and not very striking in appearance,” she merged into the cacophonous hum of 60 students that constituted her classes.
But her self-conscious silence had made her intensely attuned to others. She watched another girl diffidently enter the fifth standard. The girl’s parents were employed as staff inside the school, and the family had been accorded modest quarters on the campus. Bereft of even lower middle-class means, the girl brought the same food to class every day: kichdi. Befriending her, Neeraja started sharing her lunch: roti, sabzi, and dal. One day, the girl invited her home. Ganesh recalls being warmly ushered into their spare space and being served the same kichdi—a meal she lapped up with a kindly relish.
Even today, when it comes to “networking,” a topic that she trains others on, her instinct is to reach out to the bashful and timid. To use her own hard-won, carefully cultivated confidence to alter lives. It’s a trait that folks repeatedly associate her with—an “innate helpfulness.”
Sneha Ganesh: Raised by a Working Mother
Sneha Ganesh grew up watching her mother briskly pleat her saree into place, hand over her breakfast with a peremptory “eat,” then scurry to beat the Bangalore traffic as she headed to work. Her father dropped her off at school. “For as long as I’ve grown up, I’ve always looked at my mom as somebody who goes to work,” she says. For Sneha, pursuing a career was never in doubt. It was always about what she’d do, not if she’d do anything.
At school, she was a standout as a topper. Because, as she puts it, all she did was study. While she did have friends, she wasn’t quite as extroverted as she is now. Moreover, she does admit that her parents were very strict, maintaining a strong thrust on academics. While most friends had the leeway to eat out, Sneha would treasure the occasional 10 INR for samosas and candy, a sum she would sometimes shore up to afford a 30 INR Gobi Manchurian plate. With a phlegmatic acceptance, she says, “I wasn’t really allowed to go out or do stuff after school.”
Neeraja interrupts. She reminds us that she was much more lenient than her mother was. To which Sneha adds, “When my kid comes, you can see what happens.”
Neeraja Ganesh: Plumbing Her Passion for Maths
Moving to Bangalore in the 8th grade, Neeraja continued to submit to her parents’ conservative strictures. Her own mother had completed her graduation in Mathematics, so attending a college and finishing a degree was a given. Thereafter teenage Neeraja’s future felt fuzzy. Maybe she’d be a homemaker? After all, she hadn’t encountered other role models.
In the 11th and 12th grades, she signed up for PCMB (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, Biology), because most of her classmates were picking up that combination. Till then, she did not question what she calls a “herd mentality” in her 2022 TEDx talk. After garnering a laudable rank in her CET exam, she realized she could no longer brook this go-with-the-flow attitude. For the first time, an inner voice seemed to resist signing up for an engineering course simply because everyone else did so.
Her own passion was Mathematics. She was the kind who would borrow Maths books from libraries, and wrestle with differential equations and complex numbers. For fun, just like word whizzes might tackle crossword puzzles. Early on, her Maths graduate mother had coached her on the fundamentals. Maybe it was the tutoring and the genes: “Even my mother’s brothers are geniuses in Maths.”
Sneha Ganesh: Building a Rounded Persona
While her parents did not actively encourage ‘socializing’, they prodded her to enter competitions. She was taught to always aim for the peak – or at the very least, perform to the best of her ability. That competitive fervor affects whatever she undertakes today.
When she discovered that drawing and painting came naturally to her, she attended classes and won art competitions. While she did attend summer camps in badminton, and still enjoys the game, she didn’t really pursue sports actively – not for prizes or excellence. She thrived on intellectual games, like chess.
At first, Sneha was a reluctant reader. Neeraja armed her with a dictionary, scrawled dates on pages, and insisted she finish sections within assigned timelines. Soon, Sneha was hooked. At one point, their home started overflowing with books, till her mom – the OG instigator – asked her to cut back. Sneha’s still an avid reader. If someone tells her the world is ending, she insists she will burrow into her pages.
The Bangalore Literature Festival exposed her to esoteric ideas and the interplay of plot and character. She too wanted to write like that. Starting out with a blog read by just three grownups – including her mother and aunt – she penned stories and poems, publishing her first book at 13. She still writes and also performs at open mic poetry sessions.
Neeraja Ganesh: Topping College and Pivoting to IT
Determined to shop around for a college that would feed her ardor for Maths, Neeraja discovered Vijaya College in leafy Basavanagudi. And settled on Maths, Economics and Statistics, because “Maths, Maths and Maths” wasn’t on the cards. Sailing through her courses with a marks-maxing ease – 100% in Maths and Statistics – she also slayed her Economics class.
With her brilliant undergraduate record, she could have easily entered a Master’s in Maths. But she didn’t feel tugged by an academic career. Around then (early ‘90s), the nation’s IT boom was taking root. Coaching centers like Brilliant, NIIT, Aptech were mushrooming across cities, and Neeraja heard that IT careers were lucrative.
At the time, money wasn’t something that abounded in their home. Getting around the city entailed walking or a bus ride. Even auto fares were inconceivable. She recalls a young literature professor at Vijaya College, who rode autos to work, something that was only aspirational for Neeraja. In the 9th standard, an English teacher had asked her to read out her essay, which started with a dreamy “If I win a lottery, I will live the life of a maharani…”
Maybe a computer course was her ticket to this lottery. Enrolling at NIIT for a two-year diploma, she pleaded with her father for time. He was hunting for grooms, and while she didn’t object to an arranged marriage, she wished to complete her course.
Sneha Ganesh: Honing Her Stage Presence
Her first attempt at public speaking emerged at the end of a badminton summer camp at the age of 7. Though it was a seemingly minor affair, Sneha had been asked to speak on stage. Neeraja insisted she write out her speech, memorize it, rehearse it many times over till she could deliver it flawlessly. Which she did, reveling in the floaty sensation that followed. Her more serious opportunity arose in the 11th Standard.
Joining Vijaya Composite College for her PUC, she knew she was going to do it differently this time around – she
wasn’t going to stick just to academics. A literature professor, who also happened to be a favorite of Sneha’s, was in charge of intercollegiate festivals. When Sneha watched posters pop up about various events, she wanted to go out there – hurl herself into debates and verbal jousts. The professor championed her participation and Ganesh vividly recalls the first debate.
The topic was “helicopter parenting”, and Sneha had a lot to say. “I said this is it, I can really channel my rage,” she chuckles. Her first time on stage, she forgot all her points and climbed back down. Not one to give in so easily to her own fears or to audience jibes, she did the inconceivable: walked back on the stage, for a second time, and slayed her 3.5 minutes with a jaw-dropping insouciance. She handled the back-and-forth audience questions with equal panache, bagging the first prize. She wasn’t going to stop with that single win. She had been bitten, like many performers, with the adrenaline surge of zapping audiences.
Since then, she has been drawn repeatedly to stages and webinars, keen to sharpen and project her voice. She aspired to give a TEDx talk, a milestone she has already crossed, with her 2024 talk on “Unconscious Biases”. Inevitably, she has set her sights further: she wants to give a TED talk at the exclusive, by-invitee conference in Vancouver.
Neeraja Ganesh: Kickstarting her Corporate Career
With no access to a computer at home, Neeraja hung out late at NIIT – to practice newly taught skills on MS-DOS machines. With just a semester to go, she received a 3-month contract from Sonata. While most of her friends opted to focus on the Sonata stint, which could lead to longer contracts or permanent positions, Neeraja chose both: to persist with her diploma and accept the offer.
Though her starting salary might feel meager by the standards of current IT earners, her mother insisted she save some of it. “Of 2,500 rupees, my mother wanted me to save 1000 rupees.” Married along the way, she continued to scale corporate rungs. From Sonata to Manhattan Associates, and thereon to a transformational 16 years at ANZ and finishing up at CapGemini.
Sneha Ganesh: Morphing Into A Young Trainer
While she was still in high school, she started figuring out her future. Besides her affinity for words, a proclivity for numbers had been braided into Sneha’s genes. She loved Maths and computers, so Data Analytics felt like a compelling choice.
Admitted to Christ University with her 93.2% Board marks, she signed up for Maths, Statistics and Computer Science, almost shadowing her mother’s path. Soon after, Covid struck. She was determined, when the campus reopened, to not be a cloistered, bookish type. By then, she had already racked up work experience at Aspire For Her, and gleaned that the real world required more than textbook smarts.
She signed up for every club, including the prestigious and intensely competitive Centre for Academic and Professional Support (CAPS), a student-run venture that bridged skills between the college and industry. At CAPS, Sneha soon morphed into one of its key assets – a savvy trainer who could transform nervy newbies into poised speakers. Though she was just an undergraduate, there was something catchy about her teaching style, because even postgraduate students wished to learn from her. Soon she was training MBA and various other post-graduate student batches, discovering that this was something she loved doing.
Foraying into LinkedIn, she published posts, while receiving testimonials from students who’d cracked interviews or polished resumes with her help. In the process, she also started actively building her “personal brand.”
On graduating from Christ University, she joined MiQ, a technology-driven programmatic media company, where she currently works as a data analyst. Alongside, she persists with her training, while also engaging in compelling public speaking opportunities: anchoring shows, speaking at conferences.
Neeraja Ganesh: Proving Her People Skills
At ANZ, she landed her first team leader role, when a manager was travelling abroad. Around then, the organization was adopting a process improvement framework (CMMI). At a large meeting chaired by the managing director, Ganesh – till then, shy and soft-spoken – spoke up for her team of 10. She admitted that they needed expert help. Folks were shocked by her audacity. They thought she might get ousted from her leader position.
A few days later, the Managing Director responded to her honest assertion with an organization-wide initiative. Every team would be hand-held by a quality expert. Neeraja learned that speaking out had benefits: “I haven’t stopped speaking since then,” she laughs.
One of her challenging roles involved leading the retail technologies team across the Asia Pacific region. The team of 30 to 35 people was perceived to be cocooned from others. Her mandate was tricky: to drive assimilation into the larger setup. Neeraja started out by doing something that many leaders falter at: listening deeply to member perceptions.
When she started out, the team’s attrition had risen and employee engagement had dipped. By the end of three years, she reversed those trends. Proving that she wasn’t just adept at writing code or juggling numbers, but also at changing mindsets and recharging teams.
Neeraja Ganesh: Finding Her Ikigai
Towards the end of her corporate stint, when Neeraja was a Director at CapGemini, she faced caretaking obligations that required her to spend time at home. During that break, she stepped out every day for a couple of hours to meet a wide range of people. Many had switched from conventional roles into freelance gigs. She discovered a plethora of opportunities that one could tap into.
Choosing to focus on Diversity & Inclusion, women’s empowerment, mentoring and coaching, she embarked on a post-corporate phase. After heading the JobsForHer foundation, she spent a year forging industry-academia links at the National Education Society. Recently, she has launched “TrailblazHERs” – a leadership development program targeted at women leaders.
When she stepped off the corporate ladder, Ganesh was unsure about finding a sweet spot between her interests and market needs. She’s one of the lucky few who has stumbled on that elusive intersection, the widely popularized ikigai.
Sneha Ganesh: Charting Her Future
Sneha’s created a curated communication and personal branding program called “Mastering the Spotlight” – one that she aims to take to diverse groups of audiences at corporates and colleges. Last year, she trained a more experienced cohort of leaders: “I was only 22 years old, and many of those leaders had at least 22 years of experience, but I was able to deliver value.”
In the long-term, she intends to persist in her corporate career and occupy THE corner office someday. She’s tacked it on to her 2025 vision board: SNEHA GANESH, CEO. Taking inspiration from Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, she’s unafraid to put it out there.
Neeraja & Sneha: Forging A Work-Life Chemistry
Neeraja acknowledges that in the early days of their professional partnership, she unwittingly slipped into the role of an anxious mom during work discussions or into that of an overbearing boss during family dinners. While she and Sneha admit to occasional fallouts, replete with arguments and banging doors, they have learned over time to temper responses as they would with colleagues, drawing healthy boundaries between the multiple hats they juggle.
Sneha says she is much better at segregating work from life. But she’s also clear that when it comes to work, she will not hold back on her opinions.
There have been stylistic differences in the way they might approach a particular speaking session. Neeraja tends to have her deck ready well in advance, and will rehearse a couple of times over, ensuring that she times it perfectly. Sneha, on the other hand, is willing to snap it together at the last-minute and is confident of winging it on stage, without repeat rehearsals.
Neeraja has learned to overcome her preference for PowerPoint. For a particular session, Sneha insisted they use Canva – a more creative, new-age tool. During the process though, there were angsty moments, with Neeraja calling out for help: “The graph is not moving, the photo is not moving.” Gradually, Neeraja had to admit that Gen-Z can teach Gen-Xers a thing or two.
And vice versa. Sneha says when she watched her Mom leave for work, she thought her sarees were gorgeous. As was her Mom.
References
Neeraja Ganesh, TEDx Talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNXHpD-Vvn0
Sneha Ganesh, TEDx Talk: