Why has YouTube’s Neal Mohan been named TIME’s CEO of the year?

YouTube’s Indian-origin Chief Executive Officer, Neal Mohan, is now the 2025 CEO of the Year by TIME magazine.

“…YouTube is creating the cultural diet that the globe is beginning to subsist on. Mohan is the farmer; what he cultivates will be what we eat,” TIME wrote, explaining why it chose him.

At 51, Mohan stands among the most widely recognised Indian-origin leaders in American tech, alongside Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen.

Here’s a closer look at Mohan’s journey, his background and why TIME picked him for the honour.

#FPExplained: TIME magazine has named YouTube’s Indian-origin Chief Executive Officer, Neal Mohan, as the 2025 CEO of the Year. Who is he?

Early life and family

Neal Mohan was born in US state of Indiana to Aditya and Deepa Mohan, and spent his early childhood in Michigan.

According to TIME, Mohan’s father moved to the US in the 1960s to pursue a PhD in civil engineering. “My dad came here to do his PhD at Purdue as a civil engineer back in the ’60s with, you know, 25 bucks in his pocket,” Mohan told the magazine. Over the years, his father worked his way up and built a stable life for the family.

In 1985, when Mohan was 12, the family relocated to Lucknow. The sudden move meant leaving behind the comfort of his American upbringing. “I was upset at losing my friends,” he recalled in the interview.

Adjusting to life in Uttar Pradesh was not easy, even though he already understood Hindi. Becoming fully fluent, reading, writing and speaking, in just a summer was a big shift. He also studied Sanskrit during this time. “It’s incredibly phonetic and rules-oriented. It was like learning computer programming, basically,” he said.

All three Mohan brothers later returned to the US for higher education. He is now married to Hema Sareen Mohan.

Education

Mohan earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

He then completed an MBA in General Management from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2005, graduating as an Arjay Miller Scholar, an honour given to the top 10 per cent of the class for academic excellence.

From DoubleClick to YouTube CEO

Neal Mohan began his professional career in 1996 as a Senior Analyst at Accenture.

A year later, he joined DoubleClick Inc. as Director of Global Client Services. By 2001, he had risen to Vice President of Business Operations, a role he held until 2003.

In 2004, he briefly worked with Microsoft, interning as a Manager in Corporate Strategy, before returning to DoubleClick as Senior Vice President of Strategy and Product Management.

Over the years, Mohan held several influential positions in the digital advertising industry. He served on the Board of Directors of MMA Global from 2012–2015 and joined Google in 2008 as Senior Vice President of Display and Video Ads.

He also served on the Board of Directors for the IAB between 2012 and 2016, and on the management board of Stanford Graduate School of Business from 2013 to 2017.

Mohan’s board roles continued even later, including with Stitch Fix (2020–2023), 23andMe (2017–2024), the Council on Foreign Relations (since 2022), the Paley Center for Media (from 2023), and Starbucks (since 2024).

He joined YouTube in 2015 as Chief Product Officer, and in 2023, he succeeded Susan Wojcicki as CEO.

Why TIME named him CEO of the Year

In its profile, TIME describes YouTube as a platform that shapes global culture at an unprecedented scale, and Mohan as the person steering it.

“YouTube provides the soil, and everyone comes and plants whatever nourishing or noxious plants they care to… whatever grows there becomes what everyone consumes,” the magazine wrote.

It also noted that despite running what it calls the world’s “most powerful distraction machine”, Mohan comes across as “surprisingly mellow”.

Congrats to @NealMohan who was just named @TIME’s CEO of the year 🥳 https://t.co/AJziFudrmL

— News from Google (@NewsFromGoogle) December 8, 2025

“He’s quiet-spoken, deliberative, hard to ruffle. He likes watching sports, going to his daughters’ dance recitals, and open white shirts, just normal stuff… If you ask him to be in your YouTube video, he’ll probably do it. He won’t be great in it, but neither will he be horrible,” TIME said.

Mohan himself has acknowledged the dramatic shifts YouTube is driving across the media world. “The entire dynamics of the entire media industry are changing before our eyes… It’s incredibly disruptive, and if you don’t adapt, you can be left by the wayside,” he told TIME.

He also explained the principle guiding his decisions: “The fundamental North Star of how I think about content policies and moderation in general on YouTube is to give everyone a voice.”

With input from agencies