Neerja Arora Bhatia

Neerja Bhatia is a leadership emergence coach, TEDx speaker, and founder of Living Intelligence, based in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area. With more than two decades of experience working with global founders and C-suite executives, she is known for guiding leaders through deep personal and professional transformation. As a member of the Forbes Coaches Council, Neerja’s work centers on helping leaders move beyond performance-driven models of success and reconnect with a more authentic, human-centered way of leading. Throughout her career, Neerja has partnered with organizations such as Red Hat, McKinsey, and Philips, facilitating leadership development, executive coaching, and team transformation. Her approach blends emotional intelligence, values-based frameworks, and experiential learning, encouraging leaders to break free from limiting patterns and rediscover alignment between their inner world and outward impact. Rather than focusing solely on metrics and optimization, she challenges leaders to cultivate presence, moral clarity, and relational depth—qualities she believes define the future of leadership in an age of rapid technological change. Beyond her coaching practice, Neerja is an accomplished author and thought leader, sharing insights on resilience, consciousness, and human potential through her books, articles, and speaking engagements. Her philosophy is rooted in the idea of “Living Intelligence”—the innate wisdom that emerges when individuals move beyond rigid roles and reconnect with their true selves. Whether through one-on-one coaching, team facilitation, or creative work, she is driven by a singular purpose: to help leaders experience meaningful, lasting transformation and lead from a place of authenticity, presence, and aliveness.