Cognizant has appointed Anubhav Pradhan as Vice President-Learning & Development.
Announcing the move on LinkedIn, Pradhan said he was excited to take up a role at the intersection of skills, AI, and enterprise transformation, and that he looked forward to working with Cognizant’s CLO, Thirumala Arohi Mamunooru, and the wider learning community at the IT services major.
In his new role, Pradhan will design Cognizant’s L&D strategy, lead capability-building initiatives, and support the company’s broader workforce transformation agenda. The appointment comes as Cognizant rolls out Project Leap, a multi-year transformation programme that combines AI integration, platform investments and large-scale upskilling for its 357,000-strong workforce, of which over 250,000 are based in India.
Pradhan moves to Cognizant from Cognite, the Norway-headquartered industrial AI software company, where he served as Vice President, Global Academy and Community, from September 2025. In that role, he led the build-out of Cognite Hub, a learning and community platform for industrial AI practitioners that crossed 15,000 members in early 2026.
Before Cognite, Pradhan spent close to six years at HSBC as Global Head-Technology Academy from September 2019 onwards. There, he led learning and development for over 50,000 technology professionals across India, China, Hong Kong, Poland, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States, building out specialist academies in AI, digital and cybersecurity.
For over 15 years, Pradhan was a part of Infosys, joining the Bengaluru-headquartered IT services firm in 2004 as Senior Technology Evangelist. During his time at the company, he rose to Principal Technology Evangelist and then Global Head-Continuous Learning, where he oversaw skill readiness for more than 200,000 employees and helped establish Infosys’s enterprise AI, digital and cyber academies.
Pradhan began his career at Tata Consultancy Services in June 1998 as a Corporate Training Executive, where he designed and delivered over 50 technology training programmes for global corporates, government bodies, and Indian central ministries, including the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Finance. He holds an MSc in Mathematics from HNB Garhwal University. Pradhan is also the co-author of The Learning Fractals, a book on enterprise learning written with former Cognite colleague Sekhar Subramanian.
