Why organizations need to nurture youth leadership – and how to do it
As the average age of countries declines and society grows increasingly dependent on digital tools, a much younger leadership team is needed in business.
Arjun has straddled the development and corporate sector with his core expertise in instruction design, organization development and system change leadership. As Co-founder of Pravah and ComMutiny - The Youth Collective, he has contributed tremendously to shaping the youth leadership and social entrepreneurship field in India. Arjun is part of the founding team of the vartaLeap Coalition, a multi-sectoral entity working towards the mission of promoting self-awakened proactive youth leadership at scale with soul. Arjun is the founder of Vyaktitva, a partnership firm that specializes in unleashing the true potential of organisations and eco-systems through design of powerful Human Development and Organisation Change interventions and Leadership Coaching. Arjun’s current passion is directed towards specializing in designing and accompanying culture transformation and whole system change interventions within large and medium corporate and social sector organisations. He is also catalysing the design and incubation of a number of collective and coalition building processes in the area of Social Emotional Learning, Life-Skills and Early Childhood Development.
A lifelong learner, educator and storyteller, Arjun enjoys weaving narratives and is the author of 4 books and several articles and learning resources including training handbooks. His two novels, ‘The Flawed God’ and ‘End of Story’ have been published by, Hachette, India. The first of his non-fiction books co-authored with his colleagues ‘Ocean in a Drop: Inside-Out Youth Leadership’,published by Sage (2013), is on the potential of the ‘5th Space’ as a game changing innovation in youth-centric development and has been widely read and received critical acclaim in the field. The second book, ComMutiny – Sparking an Inside-out Youth Revolution, published by Konarak (2019) lays out concrete ‘How to’ resources for making 5th spaces happen. Arjun has also used his story telling skills to be part of commissioning and directing over a 100 short films in the field of youth development along with leading filmmakers. Some of these films have received National and International Awards in different categories.
Professionally, Arjun completed his Masters in Economics from Delhi School of Economics and a post-graduation in PM&IR from XLRI, Jamshedpur, India and is a certified MBTI practitioner.