With almost 30 years of leadership advisory and executive search experience, Sonal founded and is Managing Partner for Accord /AltoPartners India, a leading leadership advisory and search firm. She serves clients in Private Equity, Conglomerates, Financial Services for Board, CEO and CXO level searches.

Sonal co-founded and serves as the first woman / Asian Chair globally for AltoPartners, the leading global partnership of executive search and leadership consulting firms across the Americas, EMEA and APAC. She serves on the global board of the AESC, the global association for executive search and leadership consulting and on the boards of Accord and ABC Consultants India, and has held roles at YPO YPO - the Young Presidents Organization, a global peer network of 30,000+ leaders in 100+ nations. She also is a founding member and serves on the FICCI Diversity & Inclusion task force

She also anchors the Board and Diversity practices for the firm and is a frequent advocate, moderator and speaker on leadership, doing business in India, gender and diversity, and has authored a number of articles on women and DEI. AltoPartners was among the first 10 companies to sign the AESC diversity pledge. She also co conceptualized and runs the annual ET Prime Womens Leadership Awards, running a nationwide search for awarding excellence over 15 categories in India.

Born in East Africa and raised in Kolkata, Sonal read for a B.Sc. in Economics at St Xavier’s College Calcutta, and then completed her MBA from the London Business School, UK. Sonal has been named by the Economic Times as one of the Top 10 Headhunters in India, by Businessweek, USA as one of the 150 Most Influential Headhunters in the World, 2008 and by Business Today magazine as one of the Next 30 Most Powerful Women in business. She also was awarded the YFLO Women Achiever Award by FICCI FLO, and is regularly featured in Linked In’s Annual Asia books