Women in Technology

AAKSHA MEGHAWAT

Aaksha Meghawat’s fascination with the internet has always kept her looking for the next trend and change. A machine learning (ML) engineer at Apple, she is also a tech lead (DRI) for Global Expansion of Hyper-Local Language Models at the Cupertino-based tech giant. A computer science graduate from BITS Pilani, Aaksha landed a Graduate Research Fellowship at Carnegie Mellon University, to explore cutting-edge research in machine learning and data science. With a keen interest in everything intersecting technology, society, history, and philosophy, the young techie is guided by the motto, “value time and in time, you will be valued.”

AMARJEET KAUR

A research scientist at Tech Mahindra, Amarjeet has more than ten years of research and teaching experience with excellent academic qualifications. She has a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Technology. She also has expertise in experimentation and field research, investigation, data collection/analysis, and project management. She has worked with the Department of Science & Technology, Women Scientist Scheme, where she has developed a framework for automation of the descriptive answer evaluation process.

Furthermore, Amarjeet has taught, developed, and coordinated freshman and senior-level undergraduate courses for over six years as an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering. In fact, her innovative methods and course material have been adapted by Mumbai University for their artificial intelligence and machine learning courses.

APURVA MADIRAJU

Apurva is the vice president at Swiss Re Global Business Solutions India in Bangalore, with over 11 years of experience across various fields like data science, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data engineering. Prior to her current role, Apurva has worked with top global companies, where she has successfully led end-to-end conceptualization, development, and deployment of multiple enterprise-wide solutions that leverage these technologies. In her current role, Apurva is leading the advanced data analytics and data science team within the audit function, where she is responsible for building machine learning and text analytics solutions to mitigate audit compliance risk. In the IT operations domain, Apurva has architected and developed multiple AI-driven solutions

ASHNI DWARKADAS

She is an MBA graduate from Carnegie Mellon University and co-founder of Hackberry. Hackberry is a coding workshop for 5- to 15-year-olds that teaches coding through games and activities. She also co-founded a startup called Koffeeplace, a community for professionals that focuses on supporting women on a career break to get back to work.

According to her, “The conversation has to start when girls are young and have no inhibitions about speaking up and asserting themselves.”

ASHWINI ASHOKAN

Asokan worked at Intel Labs in California but left in 2013 to start Mad Street Den, an AI and computer vision company with teams in San Francisco and Chennai. Her focus is now on bringing AI out of the lab and into everyday life. Mad Street Den is also one of the few firms where women employees comprise 58 percent of the staff. “Through our internships, we’ve helped women change career tracks and enter the workforce… Companies underestimate the impact of training and what it can do for building a motivated and high-performing team,” she says. She is also a huge advocate of learning from internships.

BINDU NARAYAN

A data science professional with more than 20 years of experience, Bindu Narayan is the Senior Manager (Advanced Analytics and AI) at EY GDS Data and Analytics Practice. With such expertise, Bindu has conceptualized and implemented many innovative AI solutions and dominates advanced analytics and machine learning, including customer and marketing analytics, predictive modeling, and IoT analytics.

She has a Ph.D. from IIT Madras on her thesis on the modeling of Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty and has a track record of publishing in international journals and presenting papers at international conferences. At HP, she has handled multiple roles, including strategic projects leader and India Team Lead for customer and marketing analytics. In her current position, she is the AI competency leader for EY’s Global Delivery Services, where she and her team have delivered virtual assistant solutions to clients from various industries.

CHITRITA NATH

A digital and analytics leader of APAC Region, Trading & Supply at Royal Dutch Shell, Chitrita is a seasoned analytics leader with over 15 years of experience with premier Oil & Gas Companies. She has led various global data science programs in her tenure. In 2013, Chitrita took up a leadership role in Shell and was responsible for setting up the Market Risk Practice in Shell India Shared Service Center. She is currently setting up the Data Science Center of Excellence for Shell’s Trading and Supply Business in Bangalore.

DEBJANI GHOSH

Ghosh is a strong advocate of gender diversity and equal representation in corporate India. She is the first female president of NASSCOM, a lobby group that represents India’s $167 billion IT-BPM industry. NASSCOM took 30 years to appoint its first female president. “Gender diversity is an imperative for the success of any business and not just a woman-centric conversation,” she says. She also believes that the coupling of soft skills with technological skills will give women an edge over machines.

DEEPA MADHAVAN

She is the director of the Enterprise data service, PayPal. One of the first things that Madhavan mentions about PayPal is ‘Recharge’—a program that brings women back to work. According to her, tech-related sectors will be defining “what the world looks like in the future.” She also champions initiatives like ‘Girls in Tech’ and ‘Unity’, a women’s affinity group at PayPal that helps women network, build leadership skills, and find mentorship.

Her life hack is, “Speak up and lean in!”

DR. SWATI JAIN

Swati is a Ph.D. (Economics) from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, and Masters in Business Economics (MBE) from Delhi University. As a vice president, decision analytics at EXL Analytics, Dr. Swati Jain leads a team of 350 people based out of Gurgaon and Bangalore. With an overall experience of 18 plus years in various facets of analytics and research including marketing, risk, and operational analytics, Swati has played a significant role in setting up analytics delivery teams in India for multiple US and UK-based clients in the Retail and Media verticals institutionalized at EXL. Alongside, Swati actively promotes the cause of women in AI leadership and is an active member of the Women’s forum and diversity initiatives of the organization.

GEETHA KANNAN

She has spent three decades with companies such as Infosys and Wipro Systems in senior leadership roles. She now heads the Indian chapter of AnitaB.org, a not-for-profit that focuses on advancing the careers of women in technology. She is a strong advocate for gender diversity and women entrepreneurship in India and has been instrumental in strategizing and implementing programs at AnitaB.org India.

She believes, “As individuals, society, and an organization, we all need to genuinely believe that women are equal and crucial to building the technology our world needs. This thinking that will drive the real change,”

HARITA GUPTA

With over 25 years of experience in managing large support and development teams, global customers, and P&L responsibility, Harita is currently the country head, India & Global Head Enterprise Business Services at Sutherland, a process transformation company. Harita’s interest areas include the domains of AI, digital transformation, data analytics, cloud and innovation scenarios with big data, IoT, and machine learning. Prior to her current role, Harita has worked with NIIT Technologies and Microsoft, where she was the Support Practice leader for the Secure Infrastructure practice across India.

HEENA PUROHIT

As a product manager at IBM Watson, Heena is leading the development of AI and IoT-based offerings for industrial and manufacturing customers. Before IBM, Heena was a technology consultant at Accenture, where she has helped Fortune 500 companies to transform their business processes. In her career, Heena has successfully launched products that bring the latest AI capabilities such as computer vision and NLP to asset-intensive industries. She is also heavily involved in overseeing the implementation of these technologies to not only facilitate AI adoption but also to make sure she is continuously reducing the barrier to entry for these customers through the right mix of capabilities in the product portfolio and roadmap.

JAYA JAGADISH

With over two decades of experience as a woman in tech, Jaya Jagadish is now corporate vice president of design engineering at AMD. She joined the firm after completing her master’s in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Dallas in 1994. This was followed by stints as a consultant and design engineer.

When she returned to India in 2005, Jaya became one of the first team members to join AMD India’s development center in Bengaluru. She hired, trained, and built a team of over 400 people responsible for designing AMD CPUs. Stating that workplaces should be more conducive for women to rise to leadership roles, Jaya has introduced several programs at AMD for women to easily return to work post a maternity break and offers career support systems to all women employees.

JAYA VAIDYANATHAN

Jaya is the CEO of BCT Digital of Bahwan Cybertek Group, a global technology company specializing in digital transformation, predictive analytics, and IoT. In the last twenty-five years, she has had the opportunity to hold multi-billion portfolios in large multinationals. As the CEO of BCT Digital, she manages the end-to-end business operations, expansion plans, P&L, and go-to-market strategy. She is also responsible for product innovation and ensuring market success. Jaya is a computer science and engineering graduate from Madras University. She also has a management degree from Cornell University and has also earned a CFA charter.

KOMAL SINGH

Komal Singh, a software engineer and a program manager in Engineering at Google Canada, saw the enormous gender gap in technology sectors stretch out before her, along with the worrying effect it has on the self-image of young girls. She decided to write Ara the Star Engineer into existence. A vivid picture book that follows mini-mathematician Ara and her sidekick droid named DeeDee on an adventure of computing, technology, and algorithms, Ara the Star Engineer is an essential reminder to girls everywhere that anyone can do anything.

LAKSHYA SIVARAMAKRISHNAN

She is the tech evangelist and program manager at Google via Wipro. She is also known for managing the Women Techmakers program in India which provides visibility, community, and resources for women in technology. Along with being a data scientist, she also has technical expertise in machine learning, Google assistant, and Cloud Platform, Lakshya is passionate about technology and wants more women tech experts in the Indian Developer Ecosystem. Prior to this, she has been a Data Scientist at Cerner and a Software Engineer at GE Healthcare. She has a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science.

MAGGIE INBAMUTHIAH

As managing director of AnitaB.org India, Maggie Inbamathiah is dedicated to empowering girls and women in the field of STEM. Having pursued a computer engineering degree in the 1990s from the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Tiruchirappalli, was one of nine girls in the engineering class of 40 and hence, all too aware of the disparity. Starting her professional journey as a software engineer at Infosys in 1996, she founded Optimus Prime Solutions to make technology tools available for entrepreneurs and Mandram, a non-profit organization driven to make information accessible in vernacular languages.

MAMTA AGGARWAL RAJNAYAK

Leading the retail analytics CoP, Applied Intelligence India at Accenture Solution, where she is working with a team of 125+ highly qualified data scientists and statisticians, Mamta is an experienced data science professional with very strong technical skills. With more than 13 years of work experience in the area of customer, marketing, product, supply chain, and risk analytics, she has worked closely with business development teams globally to sell and deliver projects that leverage the latest machine learning techniques. She has written several research papers on advanced analytics techniques. She has been leading an advanced analytics women forum comprising more than 400 data scientists women at Accenture globally to promote the culture of Inclusion & Diversity. She has also made immense contributions to the industry by mentoring junior data scientists.

PADMA PRIYA GAGGARA

With core expertise in machine learning and artificial intelligence, Padma Priya Gaggara is the Principal Group Engineer Manager at Microsoft. Padma Priya pursued a BTech in Computer Science from JNTU in Hyderabad, followed by a master’s from the University of Arizona. In the last 18 years, she has experimented with building solutions across areas of Outlook, Hotmail, e-commerce, tech, health, and travel, among others. Padma’s love for maths in school guided her towards a career in tech and she learned about the latest technologies like ML on the job. She believes exposing girls to subjects like maths, science, and analytics in their childhood can help attract them to STEM fields.

PRIYANKA TELANG

Priyanka is the WW Architect at Insights and Intelligent Expert Labs at IBM India Software Labs. As a senior AI and performance architect with over 16 years of experience, she has brought about transformational solutions for large clients across the world. Her current role includes envisioning and creating transformational experiences for business personas with AI-infused control towers towards an intelligent self-correcting supply chain for large companies around the world. She is a role model for upcoming women talent across Labs, mentoring many of them. She also contributes significantly to various diversity programs such as RSC Shakti and volunteers for STEM for Girls Initiative of IBM India.

RASHIM MOGHA

Rashmi Mogha is the head of AAU Products at Automation Anywhere, and founder of the women empowerment platform, eWOW. She is also an influencer, startup adviser, and global keynote speaker. A scholarship for a three-year computer at NIIT launched Rashmi into the world of technology.

A recipient of Women in IT Awards Silicon Valley, she is keen on empowering women in her professional capacity and is vocal about discrimination at the workplace. She said, “Women are stereotyped as non-technical, and their development skills are questioned, which often shakes their self-confidence.”

RESHMA SAUJANI

A graduate of Yale Law School, Saujani began her career as an attorney and activist and, in 2010, became the first Indian American woman to run for US Congress. Her most successful project began on the campaign trail when she noticed the gender gap in computing classes. “To truly innovate, we cannot leave behind half of our population,” Saujani explains. This led her to start Girls Who Code, a non-profit organization working to empower women in tech. Today, 88 percent of alumni have declared a CS major/minor and by the end of 2018 they will have reached out to 50,000 girls across the US.

“Girls are raised to be perfect, boys are raised to be brave. Because of this, we forget how to speak up for ourselves. Bravery is a muscle you gotta keep exercising,” Saujani declared at a 2016 TED Talk.

SASIKALA DEVI

She is a researcher and academician at SASTRA Deemed-to-be University in Tamil Nadu decided to put her expertise in deep learning and artificial intelligence to good use during the Covid-19 pandemic. She sourced over five lakh X-Ray images as datasets from Stanford University to develop her prototype, Lung eXpert. It is an affordable prognostic tool for early detection of cardiovascular and pulmonary disease including COVID-19, with an accuracy rate of 90%.

Her innovation was one of the winners at the MyGov COVID-19 Shri Shakti Challenge, a contest to develop solutions to tackle COVID-19. It also won an award in the special category of RAISE 2020, a global AI summit organized by the Ministry of Electronics and IT.

SUPRIYA RATHI BAGRI

Supriya Rathi Bagri is a tech entrepreneur expanding the horizons of robotic entertainment through her startup RoboVR, founded in 2016. While she is deeply passionate about robotics, sports taught her discipline and teamwork. In partnership with IIT-Bombay, RoboVR has been organizing its annual robotic sports championship, giving a futuristic spin to 30 human sports like basketball, football, archery, boxing, cricket, golf, tug of war, skating, arm wrestling, cycling, and relay race. It also has water sports like rowing, swimming as well as Quidditch.

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