The World Class Leaders Show · 2026-06-18 · 43 min
Most leaders are trained to lead inside one system: one company, one market, one culture, one playbook. But what happens when your career requires you to move across countries, governments, boardrooms, startups, and global power structures - and still build trust? In this episode, Andrea Petrone sits down with Arun M. Kumar, Managing Partner at Celesta Capital, former Chairman and CEO of KPMG India, and former Assistant Secretary of Commerce under President Obama. Arun shares leadership lessons from working with Ratan Tata early in his career, representing the United States in global commercial diplomacy, leading thousands of people at KPMG India, and now investing in deep tech across the US-India corridor. This conversation is about the leadership skill that rarely appears in strategy decks but matters everywhere: the ability to build trust across borders, cultures, hierarchies, and systems. Arun explores why purpose, decency, teamwork, transparency, and cultural fluency are not soft ideas - they are essential leadership capabilities in a fragmented world.
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