ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence
Hosted by Sivaraman Swaminathan (Swami), this show decodes what goes on behind the minds of people who strive to achieve mastery, excellence, and success in their business or profession. It explores their life purpose, motivations and inspiration, and attempts to understand their personal growth journey. We try to understand the why behind what they do and how they are successfully accomplishing what they set out to do in their lives.
You can discover the mental models of these high performers, who are career achievers and leaders in their own right and seek to learn from their practices and experiences. The conversation dives deep into their lifelong learning methods, personal development and self-improvement strategies that they work on, their workplace rituals or practices that have made them successful in their business, startup, or entrepreneurial journey.
These conversations will inspire you, open your mind to new possibilities and help you reimagine your purpose, goals, and practices to become extraordinary in both your life and career.
- Update frequency
- every 19 days
- Average duration
- 71 minutes
- Episodes
- 87
- Years Active
- 2019 - 2025
#027: Adrian Gropper on The Intersection of Data, Technology, and Individual Rights
Adrian Gropper, MD, is the CTO of Patient Privacy Rights, an organisation representing 10.3 million patients and is among the foremost open data advocates in the United States.
Adrian’s work focuses o…
#026: Prof. Y. Narahari on Seeking Wisdom in the Theory of Games
Prof. Yadati Narahari's research work focuses on game theory, mechanism design, and artificial intelligence techniques to research problems at the intersection of computer science and economics.
From …
#025: Dr. Annapurni Subramaniam on Reaching for the Stars with Grace and Humility
Dr. Annapurni Subramaniam serves as the Director of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore.
Her research work focuses on Star Clusters, Stellar Evolution and Population in Galaxies and Magell…
#024: Neil Hoyne on Managing Relationships in the Age of Data
Neil Hoyne serves as the Chief Measurement Strategist at Google and is a Senior Fellow at The Wharton School.
He is most recently the author of Converted: The Data-driven Way to Win Customers’ Hearts.…
#023: Roger Forsgren on Knowledge Management Lessons from NASA
Roger Forsgren served as the Chief Knowledge Office (CKO) of NASA from 2013 to 2021. As CKO, he led NASA’s Knowledge Management efforts, ensuring that the agency’s workforce had access to the critica…
#022 : Amit Ranjan on The Source Code for Building World-Class Products
Amit Ranjan is best known as the co-founder of Slideshare, the world's largest community for sharing professional content including presentations, infographics, documents, and videos. In 2012, Slides…
#021: Col. Vijay Chadda on Leadership Lessons from a Life of Service
Col. Vijay Chadda served in the Indian Armed Forces for more than two decades, following which, in 1992, he transitioned to the Private Sector. After holding leadership positions in various large mul…
#020: Allison Hartsoe on Transforming Businesses by Understanding Customers
Allison Hartsoe is a three-time entrepreneur and is currently the CEO of Ambition Data.
She is, most recently, the author of the book, "The Age of Customer Equity: Data-driven Strategies to Build a Su…
#019: Radhika Dutt on Leading Change through Radical Product Thinking
Radhika Dutt is an Entrepreneur and Product Leader, who is most recently the author of "Radical Product Thinking: The New Mindset for Innovating Smarter".
She is currently Advisor on Product Thinking …
#018: Bipindra N.C. on Exploring the Defence Tech Landscape
Bipindra N.C. is the Founder and Editor of Defence.Capital, a publication which tracks the business and politics of India’s growing defence, homeland security, aerospace and maritime trade and market…
#017: Suresh Shankar on A Founder-CEO's Guide to Company Building
Suresh is the Co-Founder and CEO of Crayon Data, a Big Data and Artificial Intelligence company with a vision to simplify the world’s choices.
In this episode, Suresh speaks to Swami about spotting tr…
#016: Narayan Parasuram on Building a Business on the Power of Stories
Narayan Parasuram is the Co-Founder and Creative Director of the Karadi Tales Company.
In this episode, Narayan speaks to Swami and Vignesh about his journey and the lessons learnt in setting up Karad…
#015: Thomas Kolster on The Unmarketing Code for Meaningful Brands
Thomas Kolster is the Founder and Creative Director of Goodvertising Agency, one of the pioneers in turning environmental, societal and health risks into market opportunities where growing the bottom…
#014: Kumar Vembu on Building a Culture of Happiness and Zero Follow-Ups
Kumar is the Founder and CEO of GoFrugal, one of India’s leading Point-of-Sale solutions for Retail, Restaurant and Distribution businesses.
He is also a Co-Founder of Zoho Corporation, one of the wor…
#013: Prof. Manish Jain on How to Enhance Learning Through Creativity
Prof. Manish Jain is an Associate Teaching Professor at Center for Creative Learning (CCL), a lab in IIT Gandhinagar, whose goal is to create and foster makers who can take innovation to the next lev…
#012: Karthik Srinivasan on Using Your Personal Brand to Escape the Rat Race
Karthik Srinivasan is one India’s leading Communications Strategy Consultants and an Expert in the field of Personal Branding.
In this episode, Karthik speaks to Swami about how he discovered and fel…
#011: Dr. Ashwin Mahalingam on Bringing Interdisciplinary Thinking to Project Management
Dr. Ashwin Mahalingam is a Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT Madras. He is also a co-founder of Okapi Advisory Services and serves as a Director on the Board.
He is the Editor of…
#010: Prof. Vidita Vaidya on a Neuroscientist's Guide to Managing Stress, Depression, and Emotions
Prof. Vidita Vaidya is the Head and Principal Investigator of the Vaidya Lab at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai.
In this episode, Prof. Vaidya speaks to Swami about the Archi…
#009: Karthik Sundaram on Approaching Life as a Collection of Journeys
Karthik Sundaram is an Entrepreneur, Investor, and Advisor.
He is the President and CEO of Purplepatch Services, a leading B2B Digital Marketing firm based in Silicon Valley.
In this episode, Karthik s…
#008: Srikant Sastri on Entrepreneurship and Building World-Class Products in India
This episode features an in-depth conversation with Srikant Sastri.
Srikant is one of India's leading Founder-CEOs and Advisors.
He is a co-author of the book, The Ventilator Project: How the IIT Kanpu…