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Ex-McKinsey executive moves back to India after 13 years in US, shares why: 'I always knew I'd come home'
Dr Neeraja Nagarajan said the decision was driven by a combination of professional ambition, personal values and desire to be closer to home.
A former McKinsey & Company associate partner has shared why she decided to move back to India permanently after spending more than 13 years in the United States.
In a LinkedIn post, Dr Neeraja Nagarajan, who recently concluded her 7-year stint at McKinsey, said the decision was driven by a combination of professional ambition, personal values and desire to be closer to home.
"Every rational framework - and most well-meaning mentors - said stay. Stay in the US. Stay at McKinsey. I'm three months into having permanently moved to India. Here's why," Neeraja wrote in the LinkedIn post.
Neeraja said that she left India more than a decade ago to study and work at some of the world's leading institutions while building an identity beyond her hometown and family. She shared that she began her US journey at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she studied public health and learned to challenge her own perspectives.
"It's a cliché that some Indians only examine social justice and systemic privilege once they go abroad - better late than never, I was one of them," she wrote, adding that the experience reshaped how she viewed her own responsibilities.
She later worked at Brigham and Women's Hospital, where she realised her true calling. “Through a lot of tears and introspection, I realized that as much as I loved bedside medicine, my calling was in systemic change,” she wrote.
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Her final stop in the US was McKinsey & Company. She said McKinsey taught her how decisions are made and how ideas can be translated into action.
"McKinsey taught me how the real world actually works - who makes decisions, how they make them, and what moves them. Without quite knowing it, I'd walked into the exact place I needed: where I learned to take good ideas and make them happen," she said.
Neeraja said that despite spending over 13 years in the US, she always intended to return to India. "I made small decisions to keep that door open - never giving up my Indian passport (despite a long-standing EB1 green card), telling my now-husband on our first date that I intended to go back and we should only take this forward if he was open to it, even choosing McKinsey (an international firm if ever there was one)," she wrote.
Explaining why she finally returned, she said, “I don't believe any decision is purely professional. Everything is a bit professional, a bit personal, a bit political.”
"My reasons were simple and a multitude at once: to build something that improves access to care in India, to hear Tamil every day, to work with leaders who inspire me, and to wear Indian handloom. That's why I'm here in healthcare, in Chennai, at home - for one reason, and a thousand. Rooted, and building for the world, from India," she added.
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McKinsey journey
In a separate LinkedIn post shared last month, Neeraja reflected on her final week after spending more than 7 years at McKinsey. Looking back on her time at the company, she credited it with shaping her leadership style and teaching her how to execute large-scale initiatives.
Among the achievements she highlighted was supporting efforts that helped vaccinate millions of people. She said that the biggest lesson she would carry forward was about leadership. "Building teams of extraordinary people who collectively do extraordinary things, while staying true to who they are," she wrote.
