Corporate leader, life coach: Niyati Sah on the power of reinvention

For most of her career, Niyati Sah followed a path many aspire for - her trajectory is marked by leadership roles across Airtel, Myntra and currently Spotify, in some of India's most competitive corporate environments.

Yet if there's one thing Sah has learned over the years, it's that life doesn't have to be lived according to a fixed script.

"I began my journey on a fairly traditional, and highly competitive path: engineering followed by an MBA," she says. 

Like many young professionals, she immersed herself fully in the pursuit of growth.

"I was deeply immersed in the corporate race, constantly striving to perform and deliver, regardless of the hour, or personal priorities," she says. "And honestly, I enjoyed that phase."

There is no regret in her voice when she reflects on those years. "It shapes resilience, sharpens perspective and builds capability."

But over time, something began to shift.

"Both personal and professional experiences led me to pause and reflect more deeply on the choices I was making, where I was operating from, what success truly meant to me, and how I wanted to prioritise different aspects of life."

“Some time ago, I began a more intentional conversation with myself. At this stage of my career, I felt ready to take a leap into the next phase of growth - not by leaving behind the experiences that had shaped me, but by building on them.”

“My journey has taken me through a large Indian conglomerate, the intensity of a startup scaling at breakneck speed, and the rapid evolution of data, e-commerce, and content in India. Like many women, I also navigated the professional repercussions that often accompany early motherhood while balancing the expectations of leadership with the many personal roles we all carry.

Over time, I found myself wanting to create something I could truly call my own, something rooted in purpose and informed by the experiences, perspectives, and lessons I had gathered along the way.”

“The turning point came when Spotify provided me with an executive coach as part of my leadership development. While the experience undoubtedly helped me grow professionally, it also sparked something deeper. My coach helped me recognise strengths I had long overlooked and encouraged me to seriously consider coaching as a complementary path.

That conversation set me on a journey of exploration. After extensive research and recommendations from trusted friends, I chose to pursue executive coach training with Leadership That Works (LTW), where the Coaching for Transformation (CFT) program is accredited by the International Coaching Federation.

The training was rigorous and transformative. Learning alongside peers from around the world, intense practices to develop deep self-awareness, being mentored by profoundly experienced coaches, and accumulating hours of coaching practice expanded not only my skills but also my understanding of people, growth, and possibility.

I feel incredibly proud of my Coaching for Transformation practice and the impact it has had on my clients. What began as a search for my next chapter has evolved into meaningful work that allows me to support others as they navigate their own journeys of growth and transformation.”

What changed was not her ambition, but her definition of success.

"Over the years, I no longer think of success linearly in terms of numbers or conventional milestones, but with more depth and colour," she says. "I have come to realise that success is multidimensional and each of us possesses the agency to define it for ourselves - with hyper ambition, but minus the anxiousness."

That idea sits at the centre of her work today.

“As a coach, I show up as a supportive partner to identify crystallised goals and work towards achieving those, by providing structure, accountability and an actionable path to progress.”

Through coaching, Sah regularly meets professionals who have achieved what society traditionally labels as success but still feel disconnected from it.

"The templatised version of a successful life has made many of us believe that happiness is hiding behind a checklist," she says. "There are professionals who have checkboxed all of the things that we define as success, and still feel discontent, emptiness, or a quiet sense of anxiousness."

She believes the issue often lies in pursuing external milestones without spending enough time understanding oneself.

"The most fulfilling journey is the journey of self-awareness," she says, "leading to the agency to articulate a purpose, spotlight on clear goals and eventually achieve our highest potential."

Interestingly, Sah never saw coaching and corporate leadership as opposing identities.

"Being in the corporate world has been intense, deeply rewarding and intellectually fulfilling—it is and will continue to be where I find my everyday excitement," she says.

The inner work and the professional work, she believes, strengthen each other.

"My coaching mentor often describes it as a form of regular sadhana—a continuous practice of reflection, awareness and growth."

For Sah, that practice has helped create what she calls a sweet spot between ambition and reflection. "I believe that is where both my identities coexist: the strategic, ambitious professional and the deeply reflective, growth-oriented coach."

Her perspective on balance has evolved in a similar way.

"I have come to realise that balance is not where you burn yourself out for four months and then take a vacation to chill or switch off," she says. "Balance is true only when it is built into the fabric of our everyday life."

The challenge, she argues, is that many people build their identities around a single dimension of life.

"We need to break the shackles of a unidirectional view of life and urge ourselves to find those two or three anchors that genuinely matter to us."

Balance, in her view, is not about doing everything. It is about choosing consciously.

"It is true balance when you don't kill yourself trying to do too much, but are able to choose your priorities and then create a sustainable rhythm around those."

That philosophy extends to how she thinks about leadership, ambition and the expectations placed on women.

"I am certainly not going to ask women to slow down or settle for less," she says. "We have one life and we should strive to make the most of it."

Instead, she advocates for something more powerful: "The most important agency women should develop is where they define success on their own terms, in alignment with who they are as a person."

It is advice that feels increasingly relevant in a world driven by comparison, performance metrics and social validation.

Perhaps the most striking lesson from Sah's journey is that reinvention does not demand a career reset, a dramatic pivot or a complete departure from one's existing identity.

Instead, it asks for the courage to remain open to evolution.

"The journey of life is interesting because rethinking purpose is a continuum," she says. "The beauty, and perhaps the maturity, lies in being able to notice these shifts, embrace them and grow through them with awareness."

In a society that often pressures people to have everything figured out by a certain age, Sah's story offers a different perspective.

You can build a successful corporate career and discover a new calling.

You can be ambitious and reflective. You can chase growth without losing yourself in the process. Most importantly, you can choose to become something new at any point in life.

Because reinvention, as Sah's journey demonstrates, does not come with an expiry date.