Kabir Sehgal is an American author, composer, producer, navy officer, military veteran, investment banker, and financial executive. He is the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of twelve books. He has also won five Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards as a record producer. He was previously a vice president at JPMorgan Chase and worked at First Data Corporation.
Education
Sehgal was born in Atlanta, Georgia and attended The Lovett School. He attended Dartmouth College and was a staff columnist for the university newspaper The Dartmouth, bassist for the university jazz band, and a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. He completed his postgraduate degree with distinction from the London School of Economics as a Reynolds Scholar.
Career
Kabir Sehgal is the Founder & CEO of Tiger Turn Productions, a multimedia production firm specializing in music, film, and multi-media projects.
He worked in corporate strategy at First Data Corporation, a global payments firm, which completed the largest initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in 2015. Previously, Sehgal was a vice president at J.P. Morgan in the emerging markets equities group, where he helped place the Alibaba initial public offering, the largest in history. He began his career by starting an online education company in India with a friend, but it failed.
Literary career
His first book, Jazzocracy: Jazz, Democracy, and the Creation of a New American Mythology was published in 2008 by Better World Books. Jazzocracy explores the relationship between jazz music and the concept of democracy. He drew upon his experiences serving on the John Kerry presidential campaign and touring with Grammy-winner Wynton Marsalis. The book was later the inspiration for a university course at Baruch College. The book later served as the basis for a TED Talk.
In May 2010, Sehgal's Walk in My Shoes: Conversations between a Civil Rights Legend and his Godson on the Journey Ahead was published by Palgrave Macmillan. The book is co-written by former Mayor of Atlanta Andrew Young, his godfather, who offers his thoughts on leadership, civil rights, love and faith, among other topics. President Bill Clinton wrote the foreword to the book.
Sehgal's book A Bucket of Blessings was published by Simon & Schuster on April 29, 2014, and reached the New York Times best sellers list. A children's book, it chronicles the story of Monkey, a character who tries to bring water to his village at a time of drought, but fails when water leaks out of the bottom of his bucket on his journey. The foreword to the book was written by Maya Angelou. The book was adapted for a stage production at the Alliance Theatre, which ran from January to February 2016.
His book, Coined: The Rich Life of Money and How Its History Has Shaped Us, was published on March 10, 2015, and was one of Business Insider's top 15 business books coming out in 2015. It examines how and why money has come to play such a central role in everyday life. Topics such as the neuroscience of money behavior and the archaeology of coinage are also examined from and anthropological and historical perspective. With regard to digital currencies such as Bitcoin, Seghal writes in Coined that it is unlikely they will gain traction as an alternative to the U.S. dollar given U.S. government's power to determine what is a currency.
In March 2015, Coined became a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best seller. The New York Times said of Coined, "If you've been waiting for an economic version of 'Eat, Pray, Love,' this may be it." The Financial Times called Coined, "An eclectic and sometimes personal inquiry into the roots of finance takes in everything from Galápagos turtles to Apple Pay."
His children's book The Wheels on the Tuk Tuk was published by Simon & Schuster in January 2016. Publishers Weekly described the book as, "a wonderfully accessible introduction to daily life in another place."
Kabir Sehgal wrote a book of poetry with Deepak Chopra, Home: Where Everyone is Welcome, which was published by Grand Central Publishing in August 2017. The book is composed of 34 poems inspired various American immigrants such as Albert Einstein and Madeleine Albright. The book became a Publishers Weekly bestseller.