Roots to Rise: Leadership Lessons from a Global Journey

Roots to Rise: Leadership Lessons from a Global Journey
By Nias Puthenveettil

What if leadership didn’t start in boardrooms, but under mango trees, on dusty streets, and in classrooms without air-conditioning?

In Roots to Rise, Nias Puthenveettil shares an inspiring and deeply personal journey from a small village in Kerala to global boardrooms in healthcare and technology. Through vivid storytelling and timeless leadership lessons, this memoir offers more than career advice—it’s a mirror for anyone navigating ambition, identity, and integrity in a rapidly changing world.

With authenticity and grace, Nias unpacks hard-won insights on:

• Leading without authority or a title

• Balancing confidence with humility

• Building trust in global teams

• Leading AI and innovation with empathy

• Turning setbacks into stepping stones

• And cultivating purpose without burning out

Whether you’re a student, an emerging leader, or a seasoned executive, this book offers clarity, courage, and frameworks forged in lived experience—not theory.

If you’ve ever moved forward quietly without a map, faced uncertainty and kept going, or lifted others while still finding your own footing—Roots to Rise is your companion.

Strengthen your roots. Lift others. Rise together.

Nias Puthenveettil is a global technology leader, author, and entrepreneur whose journey spans continents and industries-from the red soil of rural Kerala to the boardrooms of global healthcare and AI companies.With decades of experience building and scaling transformative technologies, Nias has led innovation across cancer detection, medical imaging, hospital systems, and enterprise learning. He is the founder of Piramidz, a firm that helps organizations harness strategy, technology, and innovation-rooted in integrity and insight.His leadership journey spans Fortune 500 companies, publicly traded firms, private equity portfolio companies, and venture-backed startups. He has built and deployed transformer-based models for oncology, radiology, and pathology; developed explainable AI tools; and led global teams in AI, engineering, and cloud operations. His work blends deep technical expertise with sharp strategic thinking, always in service of impact.Nias holds a bachelor's in computer science and engineering from the University of Mysore, a master's in computer science from the Illinois Institute of Technology, and an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.Roots to Rise began as a personal letter to his children-an attempt to help them understand where he came from and imagine what they might become. Today, it's a universal story of identity, ambition, and earned leadership across borders.He lives in the Philadelphia suburbs with his wife and their two children.