Rajiv Bhat

With over four decades of experience spanning international education and multinational business leadership, Rajiv Bhat brings a distinctive and highly differentiated perspective to his role as a Senior Consultant with Search Associates. His search work focuses on senior appointments including Heads of School, Divisional Principals, CFO, HR Director, and Marketing & Communications Director, with a particular attunement to identifying leaders capable of navigating governance complexity, driving strategic growth, and fostering cohesive organizational cultures.

Rajiv spent nearly three decades with Unilever and S.C. Johnson in senior roles across Asia and North America. As Managing Director for the Indian subcontinent at S.C. Johnson, he built and led a 700-person organization across multiple countries, doubling the business in five years while developing a strong leadership pipeline. He also held regional sales leadership roles across Asia-Pacific with responsibility for over $1 billion in revenue. At Unilever he held senior assignments in marketing, HR and sales in India, China, Vietnam and the United States.

Transitioning to education, he served as Director of the International School of Panama (1,250 students, 175 teaching staff), where he led a strategic renewal that restored board–administration trust, drove enrolment to capacity, introduced data-driven academic benchmarks, and oversaw a $30 million campus expansion. He subsequently served as Chief Operating Officer of Search Associates, gaining an enterprise-wide perspective on its global operations. Rajiv holds a Master’s-level diploma in Educational Leadership and Management from the University of Warwick (UK), an MA in International Relations, and a BA (Hons) in Economics.

Rajiv’s uncommon combination of corporate and school leadership experience enables him to bring a rigorous, holistic lens to leadership recruitment. His enterprise-wide perspective (gained across global business and education) makes him especially effective in complex, high-stakes searches where organizational strategy and leadership fit must be carefully aligned.

Having lived and worked across Asia, North America, and Latin America, Rajiv is now based in Pasadena, California. Outside of his professional work, he is passionate about hiking and spending time with his grandchildren, a reminder that great leadership, like great adventure, is always about the journey.