Aparna Raja🇮🇳
Head of Social at PwC Acceleration center
About Aparna Raja
Head of Social at PwC Acceleration center
I learned to think in moves, not moments.
By the time I was 20, I had two Commonwealth Chess Championship bronze medals. I am not going to pretend chess made everything easy. But it taught me something I have carried into every room since: how to think ahead, stay calm when things get complicated, and know which move actually matters.
I went into marketing because it is, at its core, the same game. You are reading the board, anticipating where attention will go, and making decisions before others realise a decision needed to be made.
Over 12 years I have worked across tech startups, telecoms, retail, finance, and global enterprise. I have doubled organic leads in six months. Run editorial operations across 8 countries. Driven campaigns with 85% average engagement when the industry average sits far below that. Built custom GenAI tools that help marketing teams move faster without losing the voice that makes them worth following.
These days my work lives in three places: • Strategic marketing thinking. The kind that plays the long game, not just the next post. • Chess as a lens. For campaign planning, competitive positioning, and staying clear-headed under pressure. • GenAI in practice. Not as a talking point, but as actual tools I have built and used to govern content at scale.
I am also a FIDE Instructor and a parent. Both have taught me a lot about patience.
If you are a marketer who wants to think more clearly, plan further ahead, or just figure out what your brand actually stands for, this is a good place to start.
Talk to me about: #GrowthMarketing #ChessThinking #GenAI #DigitalStrategy #PersonalBranding