Most organisations have the AI tools. Fewer have the leaders, skills, culture and ways of working to get value from them. I help close that gap, from workforce transformation to the culture around it, with a commercial and a people lens.
I am Tejal Shah, founder of Transformation Unlocked. I launched it in January 2026 as an independent advisor, speaker and executive coach, after my last role as Chief Talent Officer at Kantar, a PE-backed business.
At Kantar I led AI adoption at pace and at scale: an AI Academy built with MIT, campaigns to build AI literacy across the company, and then the harder step of moving from pilots to value by redesigning work around real pain points. Kantar became a top-three Microsoft Copilot adopter globally. I also led talent, leadership and manager development, organisation design and change management for enterprise-wide transformation.
Before Kantar I spent more than a decade at Standard Chartered in tax, investor relations, chief of staff, COO and strategic transformation roles, and I began my career at PwC in M&A and private equity tax, where I qualified as a chartered accountant (ACA, ICAEW). I am also a Master Strengthscope coach, Hogan certified and coach at ICF PCC level, and I was named on the INvolve Executive HERO list for three consecutive years.
That mix of financial, commercial, transformation, talent and AI experience matters, because most organisations I talk to already have the tools and the licences. What they lack is a plan that ties AI to the P&L, leaders who use it themselves and managers equipped to change how work gets done. I built all three inside a PE-backed global business, and I now help leadership teams build them in theirs.
I work independently, with a small number of leadership teams at a time, and I am open to interim, fractional, retainer and project-based arrangements. Where a client needs a tool, I bring vendors I have worked with and trust, and I disclose any commercial relationship before you buy.
I tell you what I see, including the parts leaders would rather avoid, with empathy and without drama. Transformation is a leadership challenge before it is a technology one.
Technology vendors sell the tool, people consultancies tend to start with the people programme and strategy firms with the model. I work across all three: the operating model, the workforce and the capabilities, so the change works in practice.
The leaders who build real momentum care about the people living through it. They name the anxiety instead of papering over it, and say: here is the direction and here is how we will work it out together.
Tools in people's hands build literacy and energy. Value arrives when you redesign the work around a specific, unglamorous pain point.
People copy what leaders do with AI, not what they say. This cannot be delegated to the people function.
Add AI to a complicated process and you get the same complication, faster. Simplify first.
Past experience is a poor guide in an exponential world. The winners will not be defending today's market share but embedding AI into how they work and reimagining the work itself.
Leaders who make hard calls early, say what they do not know and take their people with them set the pace for everyone else.
Reach out to Tejal for a complimentary 30-minute conversation, no obligation, to look at where you are and what a sensible first step looks like.
