Welcoming Lalit Yagnik to our RYD Family

Please join me in welcoming Lalit Yagnik to our RYD family 💜

I am delighted to share that Lalit Yagnik has accepted my invitation to become part of our RYD Circle of Love. Lalit was my partner from IBM during my American Express days, when I led global technology projects there — and more recently, he joined our community as an AI Mentor, leading a deep-dive at our Meet the Mentor EXPAND Event in April 2026. We have known each other for about 20 years now.

​He joins us as RYD Chief AI Officer and Resident AI Mentor for our coachees for them to lead their businesses from good to great with greater ease, grace and velocity.

While RYD Coaches are what we will now call Horizontal Have It All Coaches, Lalit joins us as a Vertical Specialist Mentor for AI.

He joins Project Socrates with Centre for Coaching Excellence™, a Channel of Impact of Realize Your Dreams Gym for Business, Leadership and Life Mastery™, as his structure of success for his ongoing good to great journey.

Our Big Hairy Audacious Goal to nurture Fortune Global 100, Fortune Global 500 and Forbes Global 2000 businesses requires us to become AI-native — making a Resident AI Mentor and Chief AI Officer critical to our team.

Lalit serves as a mentor to enterprises for "making Responsible AI happen" — helping leaders move beyond hype to real, measurable business outcomes. With nearly five decades as a global AI-Data-IT practitioner and mentor — including 20 years in senior leadership roles at IBM across Australia, Singapore, ASEAN, India and APAC — he has led large-scale digital transformation initiatives for both enterprises and start-ups, including American Express and unicorns like Purplle.

He brings a rare combination of deep technology expertise, business process understanding, and leadership insight — making him a trusted advisor to CXOs navigating transformation in today's rapidly evolving landscape.

Recognised by AICTE as one of twenty-seven Distinguished Professionals, appointed to promote innovation across 4,000+ AICTE-approved technology and business institutions, Lalit has worked closely with government bodies, industry leaders, and start-ups to drive innovation at scale. He was also the Founding Chairman of HITEC (Haryana IT Confederation), recognised as a key enabler in transforming Gurgaon from an emerging technology village into a global IT hub. His current work focuses on enabling organisations and institutions to adopt data, AI, and immersive technologies in practical, high-impact ways.

His dream is to lead India to be at the forefront of AI, enabling our country and the world to be fully developed, beautiful, green, happy and prosperous — making him a natural fit within RYD.

Here's a bit more about him, in his own words:

Hi, I am Lalit Yagnik. I stay distributed across Gurgaon, Singapore and Melbourne.

I have been an AI-Data-IT Practitioner and Mentor for the past 5 decades globally, after a two-year M.Tech in Computer Science from BITS Pilani. I feel grateful and proud to have been selected for the first-ever formal Computer Science degree in India.

My interests include reading across varied topics (mostly digitally), the gym, running, squash, and sharing my learnings.

I am passionate about becoming a change agent — to make a better world faster with emerging technologies. The bigger the lever I can be for leaders, supporting them to grow their businesses, the greater the joy and fulfilment I experience through my work.

I am inspired to create a massive positive impact by unleashing the hidden potential of India's human talent for the world.

I wish to be the biggest lever for the leaders whose eyes shine brightly about making the biggest positive impact — as AI can help realize their dreams with greater velocity.

I am joining Realize Your Dreams Gym for Business, Leadership and Life Mastery™ as RYD Chief AI Officer and Resident AI Mentor for the businesses RYD is coaching, to accelerate them on their good to great journey — because I value RYD's vision. I feel I can serve as a lever to RYD and RYD Coachees by enabling them to become global leaders through AI. This is a very possible dream, if AI is applied wisely.

I am feeling joy, passion, optimism and enthusiasm as I start my RYD Good to Great journey.

Keep going, RYD Family, on your journey to become global great leaders by creating global great businesses from India.

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Lalit, your passion and purpose to lead India to be at the forefront of AI deeply touches, moves and inspires me.

I look forward to partnering with you to achieve our shared BHAG and fulfil our shared Purpose, while living our shared Values.

Alongside that, holding your space for you to progress on your journey — to lead yourself, your health, your kids, your relationships, the businesses you serve and your team members from good to great, realize your dreams and have it all with ease and grace; experiencing beauty, balance and harmony within and all around; while having lots of fun and adventure together along the way.

​Loving you,
j.