Mahan Amarnath

Global OD and Transformation Leader

Mahan Amarnath is a Global OD and Transformation Leader at Global Minds Network. He brings 25+ years of experience in leading Organization Development initiatives in both the Private and Not-for profit sectors including SOS-Children’s Village International, the United Nations, Airbus as well as consulting firms Karistem, KPMG and Gemini. Skilled at aligning organisations and enabling talent, Mahan has successfully led initiatives for digital adoption, innovation, risk management, knowledge management, and value chain collaboration in dynamic international environments.

With a passion for transforming complex organizational challenges to valuable human-centric solutions, Mahan has served a number of interim executive positions. Most recently as Head of Organization Development at SOS-Children’s Village International, he led a number of initiatives to ensure the integration of one value chain across five regions and 120 countries. He also led HR transformation at an EU Agency and managed a UNDP-UN Secretariat start-up ‘One HR’. In driving digital adoption and transformation, he has led initiatives involving Competences Renewal, SMART technologies, and Blockchain solutions.  As the Head of Internal Consulting for the United Nations, Mahan spent nearly a decade to successfully lead his section in delivering 50 transformative solutions to support a global reform with modernization of people, processes, and technologies. Prior to the UN, Mahan led corporate learning and development at EADS Global (now Airbus) to deliver the first Summer Academy as well as Action Learning Expeditions to China and India. In his previous consulting career, he served as Director, P&L, Business Transformation at Gemini Consulting and Principal of Organization Transformation at KPMG Consulting.

Remaining relevant has become the primary challenge facing Non-profits currently, especially the inter-governmental organizations (IOs). While discussions on the 17 SDGs have been on the agenda for some 25 years, only Climate Change has benefitted from global collaboration. The need to modernize and innovate right across the Strategy-People-Process-Technology alignment has become critical to ensure viable solutions for people and the planet. Given this climate of urgency and uncertainty, Mahan successfully develops and executes innovative solutions that engage the bottom-up to drive the top-down for organizational efficiency.

Mahan draws leadership inspirations from emotionally-driven industries like Football, Music, and Haute-cuisine. An avid learner, he is an Accredited Mediator and a Certified Digital Strategist. He earned his MBA from Ecole des Ponts Business School and is currently pursuing a DBA in Innovation and Creativity at Horizons University in France. Educated on four continents and a father of three girls, he currently resides in Paris.