About Rohit

Rohit Bhargava is an innovation and marketing expert, skilled facilitator, and 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 behavioral 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 honored. Having my own ideas quoted back to me 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 offer in 2008, a traditional publishing deal with McGraw-Hill to publish his first book, Personality Not Included. The book 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!) ... but never become a global bestseller.

After writing two other moderately successful books (one with another large traditional publisher and one self published), 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 to publish his next 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 consultancy and lifestyle brand dedicated to inspiring leaders to be more open minded and innovative.

The Non-Obvious Trends series that he first started as an online trend report and then turned into a book in 2015 became his signature online publication, with annual editions for the next five years, and 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 series has been read or shared by more than 1 million readers and won more than twenty international book awards including recognition by the Leonard L. Berry Marketing Book Award, the Eric Hoffer Business Book of the Year and a Gold Medal in the Axiom Awards.

When the pandemic started, Rohit took a pause from his trend and futurist work to bring people and ideas together virtually, launching the groundbreaking Beyond Diversity Summit that brought together more than 200 experts to imagine a more inclusive world. The summit led to a collaboration with renowned DEI expert Jennifer Brown to write his eighth book, Beyond Diversity. The book has been utilized by organizations and universities around the world as a primer on how to build a more inclusive workplace, community and world.

In 2023, Rohit returned to his future insights work by partnering with award-winning British forecaster Henry Coutinho-Mason to publish his latest book, The Future Normal. Launching at SXSW 2023, the book was the #1 best seller at the event’s bookstore and Rohit + Henry’s packed standing room-only keynote presentation was a highlight of the event. The Future Normal features 30 new trends and insights that are shaping the future of humanity.

As a keynote speaker, Rohit has been invited to share his insights 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 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 favorite after-talk endorsements. He is indeed no Beyonce, but his sesisons are still pretty damn entertaining.

Outside of his time on stage, Rohit also spent several years teaching popular overbooked 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, Wharton and recently his alma mater - the Goizueta Business School at Emory University.

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 been publishing regularly every Thursday for the past six years. In 2022, the Non-Obvious Insights Newsletter was honored by the Webby Awards (the Internet's highest honor) as the Best Email Newsletter, alongside submissions from the New York Times and CNN.

Thanks to his many 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’s been to five so far, was sad to miss Tokyo, but is really looking forward to Paris 2024!) 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.