Rohit
Bhargava

Rohit Bhargava is an innovation and marketing expert, facilitator, and entertaining keynote speaker. After graduating with an English major and studying screenwriting and poetry, Rohit moved to Australia in 1999 at the start of the dot com boom and started what would become a successful 15-year career as a brand and marketing strategist in the world of advertising.

During his time working at two of the largest agencies in the world (first Leo Burnett in Sydney and then Ogilvy in DC), Rohit built his career during a pivotal time in the world of marketing when digital tools were just emerging and a growing understanding of behavioural science was changing the way companies in all industries understood persuasion itself. In 2004, Rohit became an early adopter of social media and started writing a marketing blog that would soon become one of the top 25 blogs in the industry, according to Ad Age magazine.

Across nearly 20 years, publishing thousands of posts, he has continually introduced new groundbreaking ideas to the marketing world—from first inventing the concept of social media optimization (SMO) to publishing a manifesto for content curators that is widely used in digital marketing courses across the world. Once, he even sat in a meeting where a newly minted "senior digital strategist" explained the concept of SMO back to the room. As Rohit wrote the day after, "I should probably be honoured. Having my own ideas quoted back to me is a kind of flattery, right? At least now I know what being mansplained to feels like."

The growing popularity of his blog led Rohit to earn his first book deal in 2008, a traditional offer from McGraw-Hill to publish his first book, Personality Not Included. The book was not a huge commercial success but was critically acclaimed, won a prestigious Gold Atticus award, and was adopted by many tech leaders (one keen reader spotted the book in a Businessweek magazine article photo on the desk of former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer!).

His next three books were moderately successful books (one with another large traditional publisher and two self-published). After that, Rohit decided to leave his role at Ogilvy in 2014 and along with his wife Chhavi founded a new independent publishing company called Ideapress Publishing in order to publish his fifth book, Non-Obvious. The book was wildly successful, immediately hitting the Wall Street Journal bestseller list in early 2015 and propelling Rohit's keynote speaking career to the next level. Soon after, Rohit started the Non-Obvious Company as a group dedicated to inspiring leaders to be more open-minded and innovative

The Non-Obvious Trends series that he had first started as an online trend report back in 2011 only later turned into a full-length book in 2015 would soon become his signature piece of thought leadership, with annual book editions for the next five years culminating in the international bestseller Non-Obvious Megatrends, which hit #1 on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list and also the USA Today bestseller list. To date, the entire series has been read or shared by more than 1 million readers and won more than 28 international book awards including recognition by the prestigious Leonard L. Berry Marketing Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Business Book of the Year, a Gold Medal in the Axiom Awards and was also selected by Pencraft as the Book of the Year.

After wrapping up his signature trend series, during the pandemic, Rohit pivoted to virtual events and co-hosted an ambitious virtual summit that brought together more than 200 speakers to talk about how to build a more diverse and inclusive world. More than a hundred thousand people watched the 50+ videos that were published as part of the summit and the effort inspired a new collaboration with well-known DEI expert Jennifer Brown to co-author a book called Beyond Diversity which was published in 2022 and also hit the WSJ bestseller list.

Turning back to trends and the future, Rohit had also spent three years collaborating with British futurist Henry Coutinho-Mason to interview and research some of the most groundbreaking work from scientists and entrepreneurs imagining a better future. These conversations and insights all came together in a book that they published in 2023 called The Future Normal. The book featured 30 trends and cultural shifts that would shape our world in the decade to come and was a Grand Prize Finalist in the Hoffer Book Awards.

In 2024, Rohit brought together a new collaboration with Ben duPont–the founder of the Non-Obvious Dinner series. Their new book, Non-Obvious Thinking, offers a proven method for how anyone can have better ideas and learn to see what others miss. Bringing the insights from his books to live and virtual events as a keynote speaker, Rohit has been invited to deliver his signature “non-boring” keynote talk at some of the most forward-looking organizations and stages in the world including Intel, NASA, Disney, JP Morgan Chase, LinkedIn, Microsoft, American Express, CES, SXSW, the World Bank, Coca-Cola and hundreds of others. At SXSW in particular, the long lines outside his popular "Featured Session talks" every year for five years running have wrapped around the entire Austin Convention Center and down the stairs to the lower level. After his packed session one year, an attendee tweeted after his talk that "he's no Beyonce, but definitely worth standing in line for." It's one of Rohit's favourite after-talk endorsements. He is indeed no Beyonce, but his sessions are still pretty darn entertaining. Outside of his time on stage, Rohit also spent several years teaching popular over-booked courses on storytelling, persuasive speaking, and marketing at Georgetown University in Washington DC. In academia, he has also been invited to deliver guest lectures at many other prestigious schools including Stanford, and Wharton, and recently helped launch a new Innovation Center at his alma mater-the Goizueta Business School at Emory University in Atlanta.

The most consistent connection for his fans, though, has continually been his popular email newsletter which he calls the Non-Obvious Insights newsletter and has written regularly every Thursday for the past seven years. In 2022, the Non-Obvious Insights Newsletter was honoured by the Webby Awards (the Internet's highest honour) as the Best Email Newsletter, alongside winning newsletters from the New York Times and CNN.

Thanks to his years of sharing insights, Rohit has been recognized alongside visionary business leaders like Sir Richard Branson and Tom Peters as a “Top 100 Thought Leader In Trustworthy Business Behavior” and was named by global recruiting firm Korn Ferry as one of the “Most influential South Asians In Media and Entertainment.”

On a personal level, Rohit is married and lives with his wife and two boys in the Washington DC area. He is a lifelong fan of anything having to do with the Olympics (he was sad to miss Tokyo 2020, but thrilled to attend Paris 2024, which was his sixth time at the Olympics!) and actively hates cauliflower(yuck!). Outside of work, Rohit believes that the most entertaining and impactful job he will ever have is being a great dad and teaching his two boys to be kind when no one expects it, curious about the things others take for granted, and confident enough to change the world.