Pooja Yogesh Bakhai is an entrepreneur, spiritual mentor and life coach known for her passion for equity, justice and ability to inspire lasting change in her clients lives. As you’ll read below, Pooja has lived many lives, and she can’t wait to use her unique, rich life experiences to support you to live your dreams.
Pooja is a graduate of Stanford University, where she earned her BA in Human Biology with Honors and Distinction. She was in the top 10% of her graduating class (the highest distinction available) and was named Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year as the top 2% of her class with excellence beyond her major field. Outside of diving into the depths of the human body and cellular magic and advocating for patients in the community free clinic, Pooja performed and toured with the Stanford Symphony Orchestra as a clarinetist and completed her dissertation research on adolescent sexual health while studying and living in Santiago, Chile.
Stanford awarded Pooja the prestigious John Gardner Public Service Fellowship to realize her dream of working to serve humanity in the context of policy and women’s rights. Pooja chose to work at newly founded UN Women in the HIV/AIDS department, where she supported her team to implement a multi-country action plan to address HIV/AIDS epidemic from a gender-responsive lens. From there, Pooja made a life-altering decision not to go to medical school despite her stellar MCAT score and chose to pursue her passion of education by becoming a NYC Teaching Fellow. She then earned her Masters in Teaching while teaching biology to high school students in NYC, and ultimately went on to study Education Policy at Harvard University as a PhD Candidate.
At Harvard, Pooja was a Presidential Scholars Fellow and co-taught classes at the intersection of Race and Education. She created and presented her original research investigating how educators of color resist and navigate institutional policies in public K-12 schools. While at Harvard, Pooja had a powerful experience curing her own stage four cancer that guided her to transition out of the PhD program to found Pooja Bakhai Coaching, a company dedicated to supporting men and women in their healing and transformation journeys. Since 2020, Pooja Bakhai Coaching has supported hundreds of people around the world to heal their trauma and thrive.
Pooja is also a published (co)author with her beloved and has studied the science of self and spirituality with Seikopai and Cofan indigenous communities in the Amazon Rainforest. She has lived in 4 countries-Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and India (her mother land)-and currently resides with her loved ones in Raleigh, NC.
