YouTube’s Indian-origin CEO Neal Mohan named TIME’s 2025 CEO of the Year

YouTube’s Indian-origin Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Neal Mohan has been named as the 2025 CEO of the Year by TIME magazine.

“In many ways YouTube is creating the cultural diet that the globe is beginning to subsist on. Mohan is the farmer; what he cultivates will be what we eat,” TIME said in its profile of the executive.

“YouTube provides the soil, and everyone comes and plants whatever nourishing or noxious plants they care to. As the garden takes over more of the planet, even threatening some old-growth forests, whatever grows there becomes what everyone consumes, because it’s what’s available, and often what’s free,” it said.

Describing Mohan, TIME said the pilot of the world’s most powerful distraction machine is “surprisingly mellow”.

“He’s quiet-spoken, deliberative, hard to ruffle. He likes watching sports, going to his daughters’ dance recitals, and open white shirts, just normal stuff... If you ask him to be in your YouTube video, he’ll probably do it. He won’t be great in it, but neither will he be horrible,” it said.

TIME said Mohan is focused on one thing, running YouTube.

“The entire dynamics of the entire media industry are changing before our eyes... It’s incredibly disruptive, and if you don’t adapt, you can be left by the wayside,” Mohan has said.

“The fundamental North Star of how I think about content policies and moderation in general on YouTube is to give everyone a voice,” he said.

Mohan has been the CEO of the social media and online video sharing platform YouTube since 2023, succeeding Susan Wojcicki.

Born in Lafayette in Indiana, Mohan spent most of his childhood growing up in the US before moving to Lucknow in India with his parents in 1985 when he was 12.

On having to learn and study Sanskrit, he has said, “It’s incredibly phonetic and rules-oriented... It was like learning computer programming, basically.”

TIME said one of Mohan’s key values is helping people get heard.