'I Chose India': Ex-McKinsey Executive Explains Why She Left the American Dream

Dr Neeraja Nagarajan moved back to Chennai after a seven-year stint at McKinsey. She says her decision was shaped by both personal and professional goals.

A former McKinsey & Company executive has moved back to India after spending more than 13 years studying and working in the United States. Dr Neeraja Nagarajan, who recently completed a seven-year stint at the global consulting firm, is now based in Chennai.

In a LinkedIn post explaining her decision, Dr Nagarajan said she walked away from a successful career in the US despite advice from mentors and rational frameworks suggesting she should stay. "Every rational framework – and most well-meaning mentors – said stay. Stay in the US. Stay at McKinsey," she wrote. "I'm three months into having permanently moved to India. Here's why."

Dr Nagarajan first left India more than a decade ago to study and build a career overseas. Her journey began at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she said she not only studied public health but also developed a different way of looking at society and her own role in it.

"It's a cliché that some Indians only examine social justice and systemic privilege once they go abroad – better late than never, I was one of them," she wrote. After completing her studies, she worked at Brigham and Women's Hospital. She said that period helped her understand what she truly wanted to do in life.

"Every rational framework said stay," she wrote in her LinkedIn post

"Through a lot of tears and introspection, I realized that as much as I loved bedside medicine, my calling was in systemic change," she wrote. She later joined McKinsey & Company, where she said she learned how important decisions are made and how ideas are turned into action.

"McKinsey taught me how the real world actually works – who makes decisions, how they make them, and what moves them. Without quite knowing it, I'd walked into the exact place I needed: where I learned to take good ideas and make them happen," she said.

Although she spent over 13 years in the US, Dr Nagarajan said she never stopped planning her return to India. She explained that she made several decisions over the years that kept that possibility open. She chose not to give up her Indian passport, even though she had an EB1 green card. She also told the man who later became her husband, on their very first date, that she wanted to move back to India one day. She even picked McKinsey because it offered opportunities across countries.

Explaining her decision, she wrote, "I don't believe any decision is purely professional. Everything is a bit professional, a bit personal, a bit political."

"My reasons were simple and a multitude at once: to build something that improves access to care in India, to hear Tamil every day, to work with leaders who inspire me, and to wear Indian handloom. That's why I'm here in healthcare, in Chennai, at home – for one reason, and a thousand. Rooted, and building for the world, from India," she added.

Dr Nagarajan's post has drawn significant attention on LinkedIn, with many users applauding her decision and sharing their own experiences of returning to India. Her story resonates with a growing number of professionals who are choosing to move back after years abroad.

She currently works in the healthcare sector in Chennai, focusing on improving access to care in India. Her return marks a full-circle moment after more than a decade of building her career overseas.