I help organisations build the talent, learning, and wellbeing practices that lift engagement, retention, and performance, and I help individuals use their strengths to work with greater clarity, confidence, and purpose.
Hi, I’m Sonal,
Somewhere in your organisation right now, a role has been open too long. A capable new leader is finding the job harder than expected, and harder still to say out loud. And someone good is quietly weighing up a move, even though the next role isn't truly a step up.
It's easy to treat these as three separate problems: recruitment, development, retention. Fifteen years inside mid-to-large financial services organisations has taught me they're usually connected. Sustainable performance needs the right people in the right roles, the capability to grow them, and leaders who can make clear decisions under pressure. Manage hiring, development, and retention in isolation, and the cracks show up everywhere.
That’s the work I do. I know what it’s like to hire under pressure, develop leaders through constant change, and hold onto good people in a competitive market, because I’ve done it from the inside. I’m also a Gallup-accredited CliftonStrength Coach, a Certified Meditation Teacher, and I hold a Bachelor of Applied Social Science in Psychotherapy and Counselling, which gives me a grounded understanding of human behaviour and what helps people grow, change, and do their best work. My approach brings these together: aligning talent with organisational needs, and supporting leaders to make clear, considered decisions under pressure.
I know this work personally, too. Early in my career, I spent a lot of energy trying to become who I thought I should be, instead of paying attention to what came naturally. Things shifted when I began to understand and work from my own strengths, and that experience is at the heart of Lumenaya & Co.
Experience you can measure
A hiring manager once told me a shortlist was "fine, just not right," but couldn't say why. Instead of re-running the search, we went back to what the team was actually missing rather than what the job description listed. The role was filled within weeks. Most hiring problems I see are like that. Not a sourcing problem, a clarity problem.
That clarity runs through everything I do, and it shows up in the numbers:
- Managed over 20 open roles at once during a major restructure, with a 95% offer acceptance rate
- Cut average time to hire from 11 weeks to 6.9 weeks
- Built an internal sourcing team that reduced reliance on external agencies by 60%
- Rolled out onboarding, performance and compliance learning across an entire organisation
The same thinking sits behind my CliftonStrengths work with teams and leaders. When people understand how they naturally think, contribute, and make decisions, performance conversations get specific, development gets practical, and it becomes much easier to grow people and position them where they do their best work.
Two ways we can work together
If you're leading a team or an organisation, we start with a conversation about what's really sitting underneath the issue you've noticed. From there, the work usually takes one of three shapes: strengths-based team and leadership development, a rethink of how you hire and onboard, or hands-on support across talent and learning alongside your team.
If you're here for yourself, CliftonStrengths coaching helps you understand your full strengths profile and what it means for how you work, lead and make decisions. We turn that insight into something practical: a clearer sense of what you do well, more confidence using it day to day, and a stronger sense of where to next.