GRANT'S DESI ACHIEVER
THE DOTS CONNECT IN HINDSIGHT
Entrepreneur and philanthropist Kumaran Nadesan is the Group Chief Executive Officer of 369 Global.
By SHAGORIKA EASWAR
As Group Chief Executive Officer of 369 Global, a Canada-based group of companies with business interests in skills training and workforce development, media and communications, and global market facilitation, Kumaran Nadesan wears many hats.
“I bring strategic, operational and capital leadership to all aspects. No day, no hour is the same as the next. I could be in a grant conversation with a ministry and move to an ad conversation with a client right after.”
The ideas and the operational part are easy, says Nadesan, finding the time to do it all is tricky.
Among the several business entities in 369 Global’s portfolio he oversees are Computek College, one of Canada’s long-standing career colleges, and 3 Magazine, an international smart luxury media platform.
He shares his “favourite statistic” on Computek: Zero international students. “The 2000 or so who graduate every year are all Canadian citizens or permanent residents in Canada. Our business model and value mission is focused on immigrants, in setting them up for success. Those in the 30 to 45 age group who come to Canada having been sold the Canadian dream – how do we get them there? With training that aligns with their future prosperity.”
Nadesan is also excited about the group’s latest venture in global talent mobility, exporting Canadian vocational training to other countries. “We’re setting up Canadian training centres in different countries to help address labour shortages in Canada,” he says. “So the one in say, Chennai, would replicate the design aesthetic, curriculum and pedagogy of a Canadian institution. Representatives from Canada would visit Chennai and make job offers to candidates who would then come to Canada through Express Entry or Ontario Immigrant Nominee Program (OINP) pathways.
“We’re creating a pipeline of professionals pre-trained in the source countries. No exploitation, and targeted to their specific circumstances. They have Canadian qualifications and land with a job offer. My business partner is in Kenya and Rwanda right now, setting things up there.”
Before joining 369 Global, Nadesan worked for the government of Ontario for 15 years, holding progressively senior roles in several ministries including intergovernmental affairs, business development, stakeholder management, communications, policy and program advisory. He describes the period of working with several deputy ministers as an opportunity “to see leadership – both good and bad – from a vantage point,” and says he draws on those experiences today.
Tamils in Public Service, a network of people in federal, provincial and municipal governments Nadesan launched, is the largest of its kind in Canada.
“At last count, 600 Tamils and allies,” he says, with a hint of pride. “I saw what the politics of pandering was doing, You come to an event, say ‘Vanakkam’ and expect votes? I wanted to gather a group of policy-minded officials who could go toe-to-toe with anyone and advocate for the community. No person is an island, and together, we can achieve so much more. I have since passed the leadership on and am so proud of the work we are doing.”
Nadesan also founded and co-founded several initiatives to build long-term collective capacity deepening the multicultural mosaic of Canada, including groups with Tamils in finance, and entrepreneurs.
He is a Director at Canada-India Business Council and previously served as a young adviser to the Institute for Canadian Citizenship. He was named a DiverseCity Fellow by the CivicAction Leadership Foundation and received the Inspirational Leader of the Year Award at the 2024 National Business Awards by Canadian SME Magazine.
Most recently, he’s been selected as a 2026 Fellow for the annual Governor General’s Leadership Conference, one among 150 leaders across Canada.
He has actively raised funds for several causes both within Canada and around the world, and personally supports causes close to his heart through the Selvayogam Foundation. Named after his maternal grandparents, Selvarajah Rasiah and Sivayogam Subramaniam, who helped raise him as a young boy, the Foundation has supported a number of education, healthcare, faith-based, and international development organisations.
“The country asks a lot of you, but if you demonstrate the resilience that brought you here, things do change.” Kumaran Nadesan with his family.
“We have programs to help young kids coming out of war situations and I personally support five kids,” says Nadesan, who has also set up initiatives in his mother’s name and his father’s name. “I was raised Hindu and the concept of seva is core. My mother instilled in me the idea that ‘the hands that help are holier than the lips that pray’ and I see it as my responsibility to give back.”
Nadesan led the effort to raise $250,000 as part of the overall community fund-raising campaign for the Endowed Chair in Tamil Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough. And has raised nearly $500,000 thus far, including support from his family foundation for the community campaign to build North America’s first ever Tamil Community Centre in Scarborough.
“We’re also strong on corporate social responsibility at 369 Global,” he says.
With so many worthy causes to pick from, one might imagine deciding which ones to support might be difficult, but there’s a theme to Nadesan’s philanthropy. He calls them the three pillars.
Education – his grandparents were both teachers.
Health – he lost his mother five years ago when she was still fairly young.
Culture – both Tamil and Canadian.
His book, The Impolite Canadian: Why Playing Nice is Costing Us the Future, being published in June, is a call to action for Canadians to emerge from their comfort zones and lead with confidence.
Politeness may be the Canadian brand identity, but Nadesan doesn’t think it serves us well.
“The cost of being too nice, put bluntly, is the erasure of the Canadian identity, with Canadians who live, travel, or conduct business abroad seamlessly blending into whatever culture they are part of without ever bringing out the distinctiveness that makes them Canadian,” he writes in his book. “It disappears from the idea, the fame the celebrity, the patent, the trade policy, and even foreign affairs.”
Nadesan recalls meeting a knowledgeable gentleman in Malaysia while on a trade mission for Canada some years ago. They had a great conversation about Confucianism and Taoism, etc., but when he asked the gentleman for his thoughts on Canada, he said, “You guys are just a branch under the great American oak”.
“This book is the cathartic reaction to the emotion that seized me in that moment,” says Nadesan.
It is also one of the reasons he supports Institute of Canadian Citizenship. “We have to redefine citizenship. Make it easier for newcomers to integrate, and to take pride in being Canadian.”
It’s easy to connect the dots between Nadesan’s work, his philanthropy and his early experiences in Canada.
He moved to Canada as a fifteen-year-old in 1997, having first spent a few years in Chennai, India, and then Oman after his mother, who was a lawyer in Jaffna, left Sri Lanka in 1987.
“We came through the points system, we had family here and they helped us integrate,” he says.
The family settled in Tuxedo Court in Scarborough, social housing in a low income area, but with one of the best schools.
Things were rough for his parents who couldn’t find employment in their fields. His father returned to Oman, leaving the family here, when he was unable to land a job as a chartered accountant. His mother found a low-end job and tried to raise her kids on her own, but it was hard. So his father came back, but still unable to find meaningful employment and unwilling to start at the bottom he became housebound and slid into depression. Their marriage ruptured, and his mother was back raising her kids alone.
A high performer in Oman, Nadesan found it difficult to fit in at his new school.
“I’d done my OACs in English, but here, I got caught between the Tamils and non-Tamils. The Tamils didn’t see me as one of theirs with my ‘posh’ English and the non-Tamils didn’t get how a brown kid was fluent in English. It was a classic case of ‘Who are you?’ Of Third Culture kids who fit in everywhere and also nowhere.”
His struggles continued at UofT where he describes himself as “culturally awkward,” someone who stood up when the professors entered a room.
“I was put on probation, and my parents couldn’t come to terms with why because I’d done so well at school in Oman.”
He would go on to graduate with a degree in English Literature and Psychology and complete a graduate certificate in Strategic Public Management at the Schulich School of Business, York University, but says he feels he didn’t reach his full potential.
“But looking back, ours isn’t a unique story, ours wasn’t a unique experience, it was no different from that of countless other immigrants.”
Nadesan has started rebuilding his relationship with his father.
“The stress of moving to a new country and starting fresh, there’s a price to pay for any dream. It sometime leads to fragmentation of family, but who am I to judge? As a dad myself, I’m trying to empathise and understand what he must have gone through.”
His wife Tharshiga Elankeeran is a psychotherapist and the founder-director of MindfulWe Holistic Psychotherapy Services. They have two children. Daughter Sahana is “seven going on 17” and son Karthik, four.
Nadesan has spent time mentoring newcomers, some of them older than him, and he tells them all not to say no to any opportunity as long as it’s safe and legal.
“As Steve Jobs said, the dots connect in hindsight. Trust that the universe is bringing you an opportunity. It may not make sense when you’re in a factory job or an Uber driver, but you will see the why later. The country asks a lot of you, but if you demonstrate the resilience that brought you here, things do change.”
For his children Nadesan envisions a Canada in which they will have no fear speaking truth to power. In his dedication in The Impolite Canadian, he writes, “May you grow up unafraid to speak truth, to challenge comfort, and to believe that Canada can be better – because of you.”
• Grant’s is proud to present this series about people who are making a difference in the community. Represented by PMA Canada (www.pmacanada.com).
