Divyanshu Ganatra

Why organisations work with Divyanshu Ganatra

• He brings clinical psychology training together with a record of firsts in adventure sport, so the conversation about resilience is grounded in evidence rather than in motivational narrative alone.
• He runs Adventures Beyond Barriers Foundation, a working inclusion organisation, which means his content on inclusive leadership comes from operating practice with cross-disability teams, not from a deck.
• He is recognised by the Vice President of India through the National Award for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, which gives senior buyers a defensible credential when positioning the session internally.
• He speaks credibly to CXO forums and Fortune 500 audiences on attitudinal barriers, the specific tension that stalls most inclusion programmes once policy and quotas have been set.
• His material translates between personal decision-making under pressure and organisational decision-making under restructure, which makes him a fit for leadership offsites that need both registers.

Biography highlights

• Founder, Adventures Beyond Barriers Foundation (ABBF), 2014, an inclusive adventure-sports organisation working across cross-disabilities.
• India’s first blind solo paraglider pilot, 29 April 2014.
• First blind tandem cyclist to complete the Manali to Khardung La route, 2016, the world’s highest motorable road, now ABBF’s flagship M2K expedition.
• First blind Indian to summit Mount Kilimanjaro, 2018.
• Master’s in Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Pune, where he was the first blind student to graduate in the field; clinical psychologist by training.
• National Award for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, presented by the Vice President of India; named among the Ten Outstanding Young Indians by the Junior Chamber International.

Biography

Most inclusion programmes inside large organisations stall at the same point. Policy is in place, quotas are tracked, and senior leaders still cannot describe what changed in how the organisation actually works. The blockage is rarely structural. It is attitudinal, and it sits with the leadership group itself.

That is the tension Divyanshu Ganatra was trained to read. He lost his sight to glaucoma at nineteen and went on to become the first blind student to complete a Master’s in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pune. He works as a clinical psychologist, and the discipline shapes how he frames inclusion to senior audiences: as a behavioural and decision-making problem, not a values statement.

In 2014 he founded Adventures Beyond Barriers Foundation, an inclusive adventure-sports organisation that puts people with and without disabilities into the same physical task. The same year, he became India’s first blind solo paraglider pilot. In 2016 he led the first blind tandem cycling crossing from Manali to Khardung La, the world’s highest motorable road, which now anchors ABBF’s annual M2K expedition. In 2018 he became the first blind Indian to summit Mount Kilimanjaro.

The Vice President of India presented him with the National Award for the Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities, and the Junior Chamber International named him among the Ten Outstanding Young Indians. With CXO forums and Fortune 500 audiences he treats those firsts as case material, not biography, working back from each one to the decision sequence that made it possible for a leadership team to use.

Key speaking topics

• Inclusion as a leadership capability
• Attitudinal barriers and behavioural change
• Decision-making after personal and organisational shock
• Resilience grounded in cognitive neuroscience
• Disability and workplace inclusion
• Innovation through cross-ability collaboration

Ideal for

• CHROs and DEI leads designing inclusion strategy beyond compliance
• Executive committees and leadership offsites focused on resilience and composure under pressure
• CXO forums and Fortune 500 leadership audiences working on culture change
• Boards and senior teams setting the inclusion agenda for the next reporting cycle

Audience outcomes

• A reframing of inclusion from policy mechanic to leadership behaviour, with named attitudinal barriers to look for in their own organisation.
• A working model for decision-making in the period that follows acute personal or organisational shock.
• A clearer view of what cross-ability collaboration produces operationally, drawn from ABBF’s M2K expedition and other inclusive programmes.
• A direct first-person account of building competence after sight loss, used as case material for senior leaders managing reinvention in their own teams.