Bala Sathyanarayanan

Be That Village for Someone

Bala Sathyanarayanan is CHRO at Greif and a Mogul Top 100 People Leader, by way of Otis, Coca-Cola India, Polaris, Avaya, Hewlett Packard and Xerox. He started as a graduate engineer trainee in Madras and found HR by accident, when the head of management development watched him teach and saw something he had not seen in himself. He walks through the path to the Chief Officer seat, the boss who told him to think bigger and spent years making it real, and what eight years of engagement work did at a 149-year-old company: bottom quartile to top decile on Gallup.