Neal Mohan

Early life

Neal Mohan was born in Lafayette, Indiana, on July 14, 1973. His parents, Aditya Mohan and Deepa Mohan, were Indians from the city of Lucknow. Aditya Mohan moved to the United States in the early 1970s to pursue a PhD in civil engineering. He was admitted to Purdue University. Mohan grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He moved to India in 1985, with his family, spending the next seven years completing high school at St. Francis' College, where he learned to speak Hindi and Sanskrit. At some point between 1991 and 1992, Mohan moved back to the United States. He attended Stanford University, graduating in 1996 with a degree in electrical engineering and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 2005 where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.

Career

Accenture and NetGravity

After graduation, Mohan worked at Accenture, then owned by Arthur Andersen. In 1997, he joined a startup called NetGravity, becoming a key figure in the company's operations and greatly expanding its prominence.

DoubleClick

In 1997, NetGravity was acquired by DoubleClick. Mohan moved from California to the company's headquarters in New York. In the next several years, he gradually became more involved in central business affairs within the company, with DoubleClick relying on him for cutting costs in the wake of the burst of the dot-com bubble. He became the vice president of business operations.

In 2003, he returned to Stanford to pursue his MBA. While he was at Stanford, DoubleClick began to face serious issues stemming from its acquisition from Abacus Direct in 1999. The merger was de facto annulled by Hellman & Friedman, who acquired DoubleClick and split off Abacus Direct from it. Hellman & Friedman requested that longtime executive David Rosenblatt become CEO of DoubleClick in the wake of the company's partition. Rosenblatt accepted this offer and also enlisted Mohan after he acquired his MBA in 2005, under Mohan's conditions that he would stay in California.

Together, Rosenblatt and Mohan devised a plan to orient DoubleClick towards being a company vested upon advertising exchange, core ad technology situations, and an extensive ad network. This plan was outlined in a 400-slide PowerPoint presentation, said by those who created or have seen it to still have influence on current business plans by Google. The plan was presented to the board of DoubleClick and Hellman & Friedman in December 2005, who approved it.

Google

On April 13, 2007, Google agreed to acquire DoubleClick for US$3.1 billion. Google executive Susan Wojcicki largely orchestrated this action. For the next 15 years, she worked extensively with Mohan, who formally joined Google in 2007, playing a key role in the integration process with DoubleClick. While at Google, Mohan managed the company's 2010 US$85 million acquisition of Invite Media. Before moving to YouTube, he was senior vice president of display and video ads at Google.

In 2011, Rosenblatt, who was now a board member of Twitter, attempted to hire Mohan as chief product officer. Though Mohan nearly accepted, Google paid him US$100 million to remain at the company. A former Facebook senior executive also stated that he attempted to hire Mohan while he was at Google.

YouTube

Mohan joined YouTube (a Google subsidiary) in 2015 as Chief Product Officer. During his time at the company, he managed a number of its marquees throughout the late 2010s and early 2020s, including YouTube Music, YouTube TV, YouTube Premium, and YouTube Shorts. Following September 2020, Mohan appeared before Congress and participated in a White House summit, during which he introduced a new content moderation policy for YouTube aimed at addressing violent extremist content on the platform. This policy expanded upon previous ones targeting groups such as ISIS, by prohibiting content that glorified violence or sought to recruit or fundraise for extremist organizations, regardless of whether the content was directly associated with a designated terrorist group. Concurrently, YouTube initiated a media literacy campaign to assist viewers, particularly younger ones, in recognizing manipulation techniques employed in the dissemination of misinformation.

On February 16, 2023, Mohan was selected to succeed Susan Wojcicki as YouTube's CEO.

In December 2025, Mohan was named Time CEO of the Year for 2025.

Other ventures

Mohan has also worked at Microsoft and sat on the boards of Stitch Fix and 23andMe. He resigned from the Stitch Fix board in December 2023, and from the 23andMe board in September 2024.

As of 2026, he sits on the board of directors of Starbucks and the board of trustees for the Paley Center for Media. He also serves on the Advisory Council of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Personal life

Mohan is married to Hema Sareen Mohan, who has worked in the non-profit and public welfare sectors for two decades. He married his wife while in New York during his time working for DoubleClick.

Awards and recognition

In 2023, Mohan was selected by Gold House as an A1 honoree in business and technology, on its A100 list for his role as CEO of YouTube. He was included in Fortune's 100 Most Powerful People in Business, placing 69th and 83rd in 2024 and 2025 respectively.

In 2025, Mohan was named Time CEO of the Year, "Global Indian of the Year" by The Economic Times, and was ranked 4th on Variety’s 120 Most Powerful Executives in Entertainment.

He was included in the Time 100 list of most influential people for 2026.

In May 2026, Mohan was presented with a TAAF Award by The Asian American Foundation for being an Asian American leader in the entertainment and technology industries.