Hi, I’m Janani.

I build things.Teams. Systems.A life of my own.

Black and white portrait of Janani Sunile, smiling, with a long braid and a floral top — Just me. The rest of the story is around here somewhere.

My journey has largely been about building and scaling a startup, working alongside founders, creating functions from the ground up, and turning ambitious ideas into things that actually work.

I take my work seriously. Myself? A little less so.

How I build How I think

How I build

At work, I’m happiest when there’s something interesting to build and a team to bring along.

Zero to one is my favourite distance.

I enjoy taking an ambiguous business need and turning it into something tangible.

I like ideas. But I like ideas that actually work even more.

The fun part is turning them into something people can actually use.

Give me an interesting problem, good people and the freedom to think.

I’m very likely to get involved.

See what I’ve built

A little more about me. Since you’re here.

I’m always ideating, building or exploring something new. Some ideas become projects, some become adventures, and a few deserve another cup of coffee before I decide.
I love being a mother and wouldn’t trade it for anything. But motherhood isn’t my entire identity. I have dreams, ambitions, and plenty more to explore.
I question everything, including myself. I have strong opinions, but I’m always willing to change my mind when I learn something new.
I have a rather large appetite for life. Work, music, fitness, friendships, new experiences. I’m not waiting for the perfect time to enjoy any of it.

And then there are my girls

Aria and Ashi have my whole heart and keep me on my toes. Between busy weekdays and our yes-days on Sundays, we’re figuring out this lovely little life together.

Next: the work.Spoiler: it involves a lot of hiring.

I didn’t plan this exact life. But I’ve made something rather wonderful of it.

I grew up with a fairly ordinary collection of extraordinary dreams.

I wanted to do well, build a good life, love deeply, have a family and make something of myself.

I had ideas about how it would all unfold.

Life, as it turns out, hadn’t read my plans.

Life happens. Often with a plot you never signed up for.

I grew into responsibilities I hadn’t quite imagined, made decisions I hadn’t prepared for and discovered that life rarely follows a perfectly written script.

Some things worked beautifully. Others required a complete rethink.

I’ve started over more than once.

And while I wouldn’t recommend every chapter, I wouldn’t erase them either.

They taught me to think for myself, trust my judgement and become surprisingly resourceful when circumstances demanded it.

Most importantly, I discovered that changing the direction of your life doesn’t mean you’ve lost your way.

Sometimes you’ve simply found a better one.

Finding my own feet

Work took me into startups, where my very first job involved writing recipes. These days I hire doctors. Somewhere in between, I discovered what I genuinely love: building.

Building teams, solving problems, working with people and turning ambitious ideas into something real.

I learnt by doing. By asking questions. By getting things wrong occasionally and figuring out how to get them right.

And somewhere along the way, I became someone who was comfortable taking the lead.

Not because I had all the answers.

Because I was willing to find them.

Showing them what a woman’s life is allowed to contain

Aria & Ashi.

My girls. My two very convincing reasons why a perfectly planned day rarely goes according to plan.

Being their mother means our little household has its own rhythm. School mornings, homework negotiations, kitchen experiments, spontaneous laughter, our groovy dance moves and Sundays when we try to say yes a little more often.

Some days we’re wonderfully organised. Other days, getting everyone out of the house with matching shoes feels like a major achievement.

I love being their mother. I love the little world we’re creating together.

And I want them to grow up knowing that a woman can love her family fiercely and still have dreams, ambitions, interests and a life of her own.

They see me work, learn, laugh, get things wrong, try again and occasionally sing something completely off-key.

I’m not trying to show them a perfect woman.

I’m showing them a woman who genuinely enjoys being alive.

And I hope they grow up giving themselves that same freedom.

The life I choose

At some point, I stopped treating life like a to-do list I had to finish before I was allowed to enjoy it.

The list was never going to end. It just kept getting longer, and more fun.

I realised I could be proud of what I’d built and still want to build more.

I could take my responsibilities seriously without making every day terribly serious.

I could change my mind, change my plans and occasionally surprise myself.

And perhaps my favourite discovery was that I didn’t have to wait for life to become perfect before I could have a wonderful time living it.

And here I am

A mother. A leader. A woman with strong opinions, a curious mind and more ideas than available hours in the day.

There are things I’ve achieved that once seemed far away. There are things I’m still figuring out. And there are dreams I haven’t quite decided what to do with yet.

I’m not finished becoming.

I doubt I ever will be.

But I like the person I’ve grown into, and I have a feeling the next chapters are going to be good fun.

So I had a plan. Life had a sense of humour. We’re getting along rather well now.

And love? Somewhere between manifesting and brewing, I imagine. I’ll keep you posted.

Next: the life between the plans.Music, muscles and a little mischief.

I build teams. Sometimes before the jobs even exist.

I head Talent at Amura Health. I joined as employee No. 4, when it was a young healthcare startup. There wasn’t much of a playbook, which turned out to be an excellent way to learn how to write one.

What started with a handful of people grew into a 400+ strong organisation. Along the way, I built a talent function, developed recruiters, helped define roles that didn’t exist yet, and learnt that hiring is rarely just about hiring.

It’s about understanding people, businesses, timing and occasionally knowing when the smartest decision is not to hire at all.

4 → 400+

From employee No. 4 to a 400+ strong organisation.

Recruiters in the talent function at its peak.

Zero to one

Building a recruitment function from the ground up.

Employee No. 4Joined a young healthcare startup, alongside its founding team.Where it started
First hiresRecruiter, interviewer, everything.Led by me
A talent function, from zeroBuilt from the ground up.Led by me
30 recruitersIn the talent function at its peak.
400+ strongThe organisation today.Company milestone
Head of TalentAmura Health, today.My role

Along the way: I spearhead ShipSabha, a community for technology and AI practitioners.

What I’ve built

I like ideas. But I like ideas that actually work even more.

Over the years, I’ve helped build the plumbing behind a growing talent function. Unglamorous, essential and oddly satisfying.

A recruitment team, from scratch.

From being the person doing the hiring to building, developing and leading a team of recruiters. Creating ownership, accountability and a culture where people are encouraged to think rather than simply follow instructions.

Recruitment systems and processes.

Working on the requirements and design of applicant tracking systems, hiring workflows, dashboards and reporting structures that bring visibility to decisions.

Because if your hiring process depends entirely on someone’s memory and an Excel sheet, we probably need to talk.

Workforce and capacity planning.

Connecting business demand to hiring forecasts, recruiter capacity, timelines and workforce requirements.

Not simply asking how many people we need, but why, when and what it will take to bring them on board.

Structured assessment and hiring standards.

Building interview frameworks, scorecards and decision processes that help teams evaluate candidates more consistently.

The objective isn’t to remove human judgement. It’s to make that judgement better informed.

Developing recruiters into business partners.

Creating competency frameworks, training and coaching across sourcing, assessment, stakeholder management, candidate engagement and hiring decisions.

I don’t want a team that simply takes instructions.

I want a team that can sit across from a business leader, ask the right questions and occasionally disagree intelligently.

Different people. Different worlds.

I’ve worked across clinical, technology, business and leadership hiring.

Doctors, health coaches, engineers, designers, operations professionals and senior leaders don’t all think about careers in the same way.

They have different motivations, different expectations and very different reasons for saying yes.

Understanding those differences is half the fun.

The common thread is people.

And people rarely fit neatly into a dashboard, however much we might wish they did.

ShipSabha

Some of the best conversations about talent don’t happen in interviews.

Alongside my work, I spearhead ShipSabha, a community for technology and AI practitioners. Speakers, workshops, real problems and a room full of people learning from each other.

It’s a place where builders meet the people behind the work long before anyone mentions a job description.

Still building

I’ve spent years learning how to take something from an idea to a functioning team, process or system.

And the more I build, the more curious I become about what else is possible.

New businesses. New ideas. New problems worth solving.

I don’t have every answer, and I don’t pretend to.

But give me an interesting problem, good people and the freedom to think, and I’m very likely to get involved.

Turns out, building things is rather addictive.

Next: how I think.The ideas behind the work.

How I think, before I build.

The ideas, instincts and principles behind the work.

Most of them were learnt the practical way: by building things without a playbook, getting some of it wrong, and fixing it.

Building without a blueprint

Working with founders is never boring.

They rarely walk into a room with a perfectly written job description, an agreed budget and a realistic timeline.

More often, they have a problem to solve, a business to grow and a fairly optimistic idea of how quickly everything can happen.

That’s where I come in.

I enjoy taking an ambiguous business need and turning it into something tangible. Defining the role, understanding the market, building the hiring strategy and creating the systems that make it repeatable.

Sometimes the answer is to hire.

Sometimes it’s to rethink the role entirely.

And sometimes it’s to have a rather uncomfortable conversation about whether the business actually needs that person yet.

All three are part of the job.

How I think about hiring

Most hiring problems begin long before the interview.

When a search isn’t working, it’s tempting to blame the talent market.

Sometimes that’s fair.

But sometimes the real problem is that nobody has agreed on what success in the role should actually look like.

I’d rather challenge the brief early than spend three months searching for someone who doesn’t exist.

Candidates experience the company through its recruiters.

Recruitment is often someone’s first meaningful interaction with an organisation.

That interaction matters.

I want my recruiters to understand the business, communicate honestly, respect people’s time and represent the company with the same care as the people building its products.

Because a good candidate experience isn’t a courtesy. It’s part of your reputation.

A new role is a hypothesis, not a vacancy.

Especially in a growing business, the first version of a role isn’t always the right one.

The market tells you things. Candidates challenge your assumptions. Interviews reveal what you’ve misunderstood.

Good hiring requires the confidence to change your mind when the evidence demands it.

Knowing when not to hire is also the job.

Speed matters. So does judgement.

A vacancy doesn’t automatically justify a hire, and a hiring target isn’t a reason to ignore what the business actually needs.

Sometimes the most valuable recruitment decision is the one you don’t make.

The part I enjoy most

Building something is satisfying.

But watching people become genuinely good at what they do? That’s a different kind of satisfaction.

I’ve seen recruiters grow from needing guidance on every conversation to confidently challenging hiring managers, solving difficult searches and developing their own judgement.

That’s the kind of leadership I believe in.

Not creating a team that needs me in every meeting.

Creating a team that knows what to do when I’m not in the room.

Next: my story.Plot twists included.

Big dreams. A little vanity. A lot of living.

I have a rather long list of things I want to do, learn, build and experience.

Some involve AI, Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, dashboards and serious planning. Others involve a beautiful dress, good company and absolutely no planning whatsoever.

I like both versions of me.

And I see no reason why they can’t get along.

A curious mind. A few indulgences.

Between working in a fast-paced startup and everything else life involves, I’ve somehow found room for a growing collection of interests.

I’m learning to sing, exploring the finer nuances of British English and feeding a curiosity that takes me from human behaviour to business, philosophy and whatever else catches my attention.

I’m also rather fond of strength training and lifting these days. Having previously lost around 40 kg, my focus now is on building strength, lifting heavier and seeing what my body can do.

Turns out, I quite enjoy being strong.

I’ve always been curious about the world around me. There’s always a new idea, an unfamiliar perspective or something to question, whether it’s something I know or something I don’t.

And yes, I care about how I look.

I’ve grown rather fond of the rituals of looking after myself. My skin, my hair, my clothes, my fitness, all of it.

A little vanity never hurt anyone.

Dress code: teal

I can spend an afternoon thinking about an interesting business problem and an evening looking for the perfect teal dress.

Both require research. One comes with better lighting.

The life between the plans.

Good company

My favourite people can turn an ordinary evening into hours of laughter, wonderfully ridiculous stories and the occasional debate nobody remembers starting.

I’m equally fond of movie nights with a glass of wine, something delicious to eat and nowhere else I need to be.

Admit one · First day, first show

And when it’s a Thalaivar film? First day, first show and a sore throat from all the cheering.

Some traditions are simply too close to the heart to worry about practicality or logistics.

Now playing

A.R. Rahman
Ilaiyaraaja

A.R. Rahman and Ilaiyaraaja can stop me in my tracks. And I’m not particularly good at resisting the urge to dance when a favourite song comes on.

Recipe card · Chicken biryani

I enjoy cooking, especially for people I love. You may have heard about the biryani. It’s all true.

Sometimes, doing absolutely nothing is a perfectly good plan too.

Postcard · Places I haven’t been yet

There’s also a fair bit of the world I’d like to see. Different cultures, unfamiliar places and experiences I haven’t had yet.

I’m in no hurry to tick off a list. I’d rather have stories worth remembering.

My favourite pep talk

Girl, look at you.

Look at everything you’ve built.

Look at everything you’re still becoming.

I say it on tough days. I also say it when the outfit is working.

Next: what I believe.Some of it quite loudly.

Happiness is a choice.

I have big dreams, strong opinions and a rather enthusiastic approach to life.

There’s always something new to learn, someone interesting to meet and something worth laughing about.

Do I have everything figured out? Absolutely not.

But I’m curious, I’m learning and I’m having a pretty good time.

And when life doesn’t go according to plan?

Well, I’ve become rather good at making another one.

A few things I believe. Some of them quite loudly.

Gratitude and ambition belong together.

I’m grateful for what I have and excited about what I want to achieve.

I don’t see why I should have to choose between the two.

Be kind. Be authentic. Tell the truth.

I believe in being genuinely kind, staying true to myself and saying what I mean.

Honesty matters. So does how you deliver it.

There’s no need to be unkind simply because you’re right.

Love generously. Wish people well.

Love matters. In friendships, family, relationships and all the little ways we show up for one another.

I love seeing people happy, doing well and finding their own little joys.

Know what’s yours.

My choices, my effort, my attitude? My responsibility.

Other people’s opinions, decisions and reactions?

I respect them without carrying them.

Show up. Push your limits. Never give up.

There are good days, bad days and days when showing up is an achievement in itself. Show up anyway.

Push a little beyond what you think you’re capable of. You might surprise yourself with how far you can go.

Sometimes the plan needs changing. The dream doesn’t.

Make room for what matters.

Work, family, friends, ambitions and a little time for myself.

They won’t always fit neatly into a perfectly balanced schedule.

That’s life. Not a scheduling failure.

Laugh along the way.

A little optimism, a genuine smile and a good laugh can make all the difference.

And when things get a little ridiculous?

We figure things out, one day at a time.

One last thing.

I’m unapologetically ambitious, but I don’t intend to postpone enjoying my life until every goal has been achieved.

There will always be something more to do, learn or experience.

I’d quite like to enjoy the journey too.

Janani

Next: say hello.I’m all ears.

So, what shall we talk about?

Building teams? Absolutely.

A long walk on the beach? Of course.

Motherhood, girlhood, life, people, interesting ideas or why some conversations are better over coffee?

I’m all ears.

I enjoy a good conversation, especially one that starts somewhere sensible and ends somewhere completely unexpected.

Conversation starters

Building teams Why people do what they do Motherhood Big ideas Human behaviour Health

Janani Sunile

Emailjanani.sunile@gmail.com

LinkedInlinkedin.com/in/jananisunil ›

Back to the beginning.