Habits
Hari is not your typical corporate strategist. With a career spanning large multinational corporations, startups, and now the mission-driven space of sustainable seafood, his journey is defined by an insatiable curiosity and a relentless drive to make things work efficiently, pragmatically, and at scale.
He thrives at the intersection of vision and execution, and his role isn’t just about operational excellence, it’s about bringing a bold and transformative idea to life. He takes the myriad of challenges Happy Fish encounters and breaks them into manageable parts, prioritises effectively, and ensures that ideas move from concepts to reality.
Hari’s journey into Happy Fish wasn’t a straight line. For years, he followed the traditional corporate trajectory: consultant, team lead, manager, director, practice lead, climbing each rung of the ladder. It was always about the next title, the next salary bump, the external validation. But a few years ago, a career coach helped shift his perspective, challenging him to consider values over accolades. It was an unfamiliar, uncomfortable mindset for someone as pragmatic as Hari.
This mindset shift led him to Sandra, the visionary & founder behind Happy Fish. A one-hour coffee meeting turned into a full-day conversation; one that wasn’t about job descriptions or day-to-day tasks but about ideas, values, and impact. It wasn’t a clear-cut decision, Hari isn’t a die-hard environmentalist, nor does he have a background in seafood. But he saw something in the Happy Fish vision & mission, his values aligned with Sandra and most importantly, he believed he could bring it to life.
While many of Hari’s prior career milestones were tied to metrics, his most profound experiences at Happy Fish to date have been deeply human:
- Visiting Professor David Booth and his team of marine biologists studying seahorses at Sydney Institute of Marine Sciences.
- Sitting with Aboriginal Elders, Auntie Rhonda and Uncle Dean. Learning first hand traditional knowledge, concepts of sustainability and stewardship that existed for generations before modern science.
- Understanding the love of the water from 3rd generation artisanal commercial fishers who care deeply about their patch and sustainability.
As a team Sandra and Hari have polar opposite approaches, Sandra watches the video while Hari reads the transcript, their strong opinions can lead to heated debates. However, their common values and mutual respect enables them to challenge any idea, dismantle it, and then rebuild it into something stronger.
Happy Fish is more than just business as usual for Hari, it’s a testament to what happens when values and strategy align.
