High-paying job placements are on the decline for MBA graduates of Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, and other top B-schools in America, according to a recent study by The Wall Street Journal. 23% of Harvard Business School’s 2024 MBA batch have remained unemployed for the past 3 months. It provides a contrast to the non-corporate sector with myriad opportunities for purpose-driven leadership that zeroes in on a noble vision and mission, rather than revenues and ROI.

Teach for America, one of the largest nonprofits in the US, has decided to trust Indian American Aneesh Sohoni with its top leadership baton from the departing CEO Elisa Villanueva Beard. Aneesh Sohoni, as the next CEO of Teach for America, is looking to come back home in April 2025. He euphorically looks upon this opportunity as his homecoming as he started his career and the journey to becoming a leading educationist at Teach for America in 2009.

PC: Twin-cities.umn.edu

Teach for America is a nationwide community of changemakers, including “leaders who teach, and teachers who lead” to illuminate your minds from low-income families in US public schools. As CEO of the organization with 35 years of impact on the uneven landscape of American education, Aneesh Sohoni will be heading a network of 70,000 alumni, teachers, tutors, and staff to prepare every child for a bright future, thereby driving the country’s socio-economic growth.

Aneesh whose Indian immigrant parents live in Minneapolis, was in the pool of promising college graduates that Teach for America had recruited in early 2009. Two years of teaching English as a corps member of TFA set his career path forever. “My life changed when I became a corps member. My students in my Twin Cities high school classroom were incredible and their potential was only matched in size by the challenges they faced in an unjust education system. I knew then I needed to make this my life’s work,” Aneesh shared in a LinkedIn post.

His passion for transformative education catapulted him to Tennessee where he worked as the Chief of Staff to Assistant Commissioner for Teachers and Leaders for nearly 3 years. The role of a project director at a New York-based nonprofit that strives to improve America’s education system in high-needs schools was his next venture for two years. His dedication to uplifting communities through education led to him being roped in as Teach for America’s Executive Director for Greater Chicago and Northwest Indiana.

After shouldering the responsibilities of a zonal Executive Director for TFA, from 2016 through 2021, Aneesh Sohoni took a leap as CEO of One Million Degrees in Chicago. OMD empowers Greater Chicago’s deserving community college students from low-income families to excel in education, career, and life, so they could become important cogs and wheels in America’s growth engine. As CEO of One Million Degrees, Aneesh collaborated with several bodies of civic importance, like City Colleges of Chicago and Complete College of America, to further drive the impact of OMD in the past 3 years.

In his new role as Teach for America’s CEO, Aneesh Sohoni believes, “the current trajectory of education and learning in our country does not have to define our future,” and says, “I am proud that TFA prioritizes coalition-building with students and communities to achieve a shared vision for a future that is brighter than today.”

The post Who’s Indian American Aneesh Sohoni, New CEO of Teach for America, to Reform Education in Trump 2.0 Era appeared first on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

Of the highest paid billionaire CEOs in USA for 2023, as reported by the Wall Street Journal in May 2024, India-born Nikesh Arora ranked second with his equity-heavy remuneration of US$ 151.43 million. Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen, IBM’s CEO Arvind Krishna, Alphabet’s CEO Sundar Pichai, and Micron Tech’s Sanjay Malhotra are also among the highest paid CEOs in America. Though the newly appointed CEO Indian-origin Salim Ramji’s salary may not match theirs, he will be leading the $9 trillion asset manager, Vanguard.

PC: LinkedIn

Vanguard, one of the world’s Big Three investment management firms managing, has recently passed the baton to its newly appointed CEO Salim Ramji, a former BlackRock veteran. Unlike Google, Microsoft, IBM, Adobe, FedEx, and Honeywell, the Pennsylvania-based asset management behemoth coronated an outsider as its CEO in its 50-year history, much to the surprise of the business world. Salim Ramji, who got silver hair in the industry over 25 years, will take over as CEO of Vanguard in July.

53-year-old Salim Ramji, who journeyed from his father’s grocery store in British Columbia to the C-suite of America, will take the helm from Tim Buckley, whose leadership drove the asset growth at Vanguard by 80%. Ramji also boasts an impressive track record of success in his previous organization, BlackRock, the world’s leading AMC dealing in investment and risk management solutions.  He joined BlackRock as its global head of corporate strategy in 2014 and went on to lead its US wealth advisory business during his illustrious tenure spanning 10 years.

He is indebted to his parents for everything, specifically the gift of education and financial security lessons. He grew up following his mother, who like most other Indian women in general used to manage household expenses and save money even if as little as $100 every month despite “a lot of ups and downs”. It shaped his understanding about the importance of financial discipline, savings, investment, and long-term planning, starting from an early age.

Other than this foundation for his career in global finance, his parents’ incomplete school education has been a constant drive for his pursuit of ‘American Dream’. Since they had to drop out of high school due to limited means, they were adamant about their son’s high education. Vanguard CEO Salim Ramji majored in economics and politics at the University of Toronto before earning an MA degree in law from Cambridge University. Hence, education and financial planning have had a great bearing on his rise to the C-suite of a leading American AMC.

Born in Canada, he would feel thrilled at the thought of becoming a hockey player. He joined a law school, as hockey did not happen to him. He started his career as a lawyer at Clifford Chance, an international law firm headquartered in London. However, he made it big as a senior partner at McKinsey & Company in New York in 1998. The journey he had started then has culminated in his new designation, CEO of Vanguard. He is now part of the growing cohort of Indian-origin CEOs driving the US economy.

Salim Ramji was serving as Global Head of iShares and Index investing, among key products in the portfolio of BlackRock, when he announced his resignation in Jan 2024. He rolled out and innovated low-cost investment products resulting in adding tens of millions of investors to the customer base. He also initiated a voting platform simplifying investors’ participation in shareholder meetings through proxy voting. With 25 years of experience in wealth management and investment advisory, he is often referred to as a ‘Chanakya’ in global finance.

Subscribe to Travel Beats, an overseas Indian community portal, for Indian Diaspora stories, US visa & immigration news, and updates on air travel. Travel Beats is a subsidiary of Indian Eagle, the leading air-ticketing partner of major airlines offering the best deals for business class tickets and economy flights round the year.

The post Indian-origin Salim Ramji Makes History as First Externally Appointed CEO of Vanguard, a $9Trillion American AMC appeared first on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

Srinivas Pallia from New Jersey is appointed as the global CEO and MD of Wipro, a leading IT behemoth operating in 66 countries directly and indirectly. His taking over the role from Thierry Delaporte inflated the cohort of Indian-origin CEOs worldwide. The second quarter of 2024 has just started, and the world is surprised to see the third Indian-origin tech leader having ascended the hot seat in the C-suite of a conglomerate, after Dhivya Suryadevara and Sridhar Ramaswamy.

PC: Wipro | LinkedIn

Wipro CEO Srinivas Pallia’s journey is similar to that of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Both the CEOs had started their journey in the same year 1992. Microsoft hired Nadella as a young engineer and Pallia joined Wipro as a product manager back then. Srinivas Pallia, a fresh graduate from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in 1992, walked into Wipro headquarters, Bengaluru with his appointment letter, confidence, and ambitions but without knowing that he would lead the global enterprise and its more than 2,50,000 employees 32 years down the lane from then.

Satya Nadella’s career advice, “Don’t wait for your next job to do your best work”, holds true for Srinivas Pallia’s 32-year illustrious career spanning various leadership roles at Wipro, from India to America. His unwavering loyalty to Wipro, a surprise to Millennials and Gen Z, is reflective of what Satya Nadella said in an interview with CNBC, “Instead of viewing your current job as an obstacle to achieving your career goals, look at it as an opportunity to demonstrate your enthusiasm and commitment to work, as well as your willingness to learn.”

Srinivas Pallia held eight leadership roles and left an imprint of his singularity in each role before he took the reins of Wipro as its CEO and MD. His “strong track record of leadership through some of the most significant technological shifts the industry has seen” culminated at the topmost echelon of the company. In his new role, he will continue to be posted in New Jersey where he was serving as the CEO of Americas 1, one of Wipro’s four strategic market units. Prior to New Jersey, he spent 8 years in Minneapolis as the General Manager of Central Operations and then as the Vice President of Enterprise Business in the US.

In 2008, Business Today magazine featured Mr Pallia among India’s 25 Hottest Young Business Executives. He is a fitness freak. A pair of running shoes is the one of the few things that he packs into his bag whenever he books business flights to India and other destinations. “I have got to get my daily dose of exercise and I have been known to go for a workout as late as 11 pm,” he told Business Today.

A member of the Wipro Executive Board, Srinivas Pallia believes that upskilling is a stepping stone to every milestone in life. When ‘upskilling’ was in not anyone’s dictionary, he added an advanced leadership program certificate from Canada’s McGill University to his portfolio in 2006. He pursued a global business, strategy and leadership program from Harvard Business School in 2019.

Mr. Pallia, an avid hiker who loves challenges, wore the hat of CEO when Wipro is having a bumpy ride across leadership transition, senior-level talent attrition, low employee morale, business underperformance, inflationary pressures, economic uncertainty in certain geographies, etc., according to industry analysts. As he assumed office as MD and CEO of Wipro, he has immediately been tasked with energizing the workforce, regaining stakeholders’ confidence, aligning their goals to the company’s mission & vision, boosting revenues, and likes.

The post Wipro’s New Global CEO is Srinivas Pallia in New Jersey: Interesting Facts about His Journey from Product Manager appeared first on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

“17 to 1 is the current ratio of male CEOs and female CEOs in the world. Female representation at the top of C-suites was only 8% in 2021, according to male vs female CEO statistics. Women CEOs led merely 10.4 % of businesses owned by US-based conglomerates, as per a 2023 study by Fortune.com. The gender gap in the American corporate is so wide that we got to cover only one Indian-origin woman CEO, Devika Bulchandani, against 15 Indian-origin business leaders who made it big as global CEOs in the past two years,” said Sourav Agarwal, the Editor of Travel Beats.

However, filling the gap a little is Indian-origin Dhivya Suryadevara who recently got her foothold in the American C-suite as CEO of financial services at UnitedHealth Group, the world’s largest health care MNC by revenue. With this most prestigious designation, she joined the elite club of not only Indian American CEOs, but also South Indians like Indra Nooyi, Sridhar Ramaswamy, Sundar Pichai, Anand Eswaran, Satya Nadella, and Somyanarayan Sampath.

CEO Dhivya Suryadevara, who lives in New York City, had made history in 2018 as the first female Chief Finance Officer (CFO) of General Motors in its 110-year history. Her journey from a humble background in Chennai to the C-suite of the leading American automaker was so popular a story in international media that she became a ‘poster girl’ for ambition. She joined GM as a senior financial analyst in SEP 2004 and rose up the ranks, such as Manager, Fixed Income; Managing Director, Investment Strategy; Chief Investment Officer, Asset Management; VP of Corporate Finance in 2015.

She used to be referred to as one of the fastest rising stars at GM due to the meteoric growth in her ‘American Dream’ career. As the youngest Chief Investment Officer of GM Asset Management, Dhivya was at the helm of funds worth $85bn for the company’s pension plans. She made it to Fortune Magazine’s ‘40 under 40’ list of the most influential young people in business for her decisive leadership in finance and investment.

Her strategy for investor relations was a pivot in GM’s profitable investments, including that in Lyft, a ride-hailing service provider in USA and Canada. Her corporate finance planning was among the drivers for the company’s hassle-free acquisition of Cruise, a self-driving tech startup. In an official statement issued in June 2018, GM acknowledged Dhivya’s efforts behind Softbank’s $2.25bn investment in the company’s autonomous vehicle technology project.

Evidently, her resignation only in two years of her role as General Motors’ CFO was headlined as ‘a surprising departure’ in the media coverage far and wide.

Dhivya Suryadevara’s ceaseless thrust for performance and progress comes from the way she was raised along with her two sisters by a single mother in Chennai, India. After her father’s untimely demise, her mother worked hard to provide for their education. “Her high expectations made us want to do better, and we learned that nothing comes easy. You have to work diligently to get what you need or desire,” Dhivya told Quartz.com in an interview.

After having passed Chartered Accountancy following an M.Com. degree, she travelled to the States to study MBA at Harvard Business School. Thereafter, she got to intern at the World Bank in 2002, which propelled her career to UBS Group as an Investment Banker.

Her story may resonate with thousands of Indian students from middle-income families, who are aspiring to get an F1 visa or currently studying in the US or any other country. Since Indian American CEO Dhivya Suryadevara’s flight to USA, Harvard education, and other expenses were funded with student loans, she found herself under a pressure to perform, earn and succeed so that the loan could be paid back with the accrued interest amount.

The post Dhivya Suryadevara, who Made History as 1st Female CFO of General Motors, Joins UHG as CEO of Financial Services appeared first on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

The growing cohort of Indian-origin global CEOs, on February 28, welcomed a new member who had nurtured American Dreams in a small temple town of South India. He was a growth driver for Google’s advertising business from $1.5 billion to over $100 billion during his 15-year tenure but could not enter the search giant’s C-suite despite his huge potential. He resigned from Google within 3 years of Sundar Pichai’s new leadership role as CEO.

Finally, Sridhar Ramaswamy, the erstwhile king of Google advertising, hit the jackpot as the new CEO of a multibillion dollar data cloud company, Snowflake, headquartered in Montana. Within 12 months of joining Snowflake after the acquisition of his ad-free search engine named Neeva, he is elevated to the CEO role and the company’s board of directors from the previous position of Senior Vice President of artificial intelligence.

PC: news-lankasri.com

The 57-year-old tech behemoth has been helming the AI strategy at Snowflake, from planning to execution to scaling up, since 2023. “As the leading cloud data platform, Snowflake is at the epicentre of the AI revolution. There is no better person than Sridhar to lead the company into this next phase of growth and deliver on the opportunity ahead in AI and machine learning. He is a visionary technologist with a proven track record of running and scaling successful businesses. I have the utmost confidence in Sridhar,” said Frank Slootman, the Chairman of the Board at Snowflake.

As CEO of Snowflake, Sridhar Ramaswamy will be leading a global workforce of around 6000 employees to reach new highs in artificial intelligence; a herculean task given Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai’s struggle to make Google Gemini deliver unerring performance. Apparently, Mr Ramaswamy is consummate in both online search technology and artificial intelligence. He is a fitness freak and avid reader too.

Born in Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, Mr. Ramaswamy took the world aback with his launch of the world’s first private ads-free search engine, Neeva, nearby Google’s headquarters in California. Neeva was born out of his disillusion with Google’ s reckless tracking of user data for more revenues from online advertising. Possibly, his picture of a utopian search world where consumer privacy is not a commodity fell apart, leading to his resignation from Google where he climbed up the ranks from a software engineer to the Senior Vice President of ads and commerce.

Also Read: Billionaire CEO Nikesh Arora, Google’s Once Highest Paid Executive

Sridhar Ramaswamy co-founded Neeva with Vivek Raghunathan, an ex-VP of Engineering at Google, to generate a revenue by selling economical subscriptions for ad-free experience, not by tracking users for targeted advertising. Google was (and is) too formidable to be shaken though Neeva was initially hailed as competition to Google and was able to raise funds. Nearly a dozen of Googlers joined Neeva in various roles and departments over time. However, Snowflake acquired Neeva in 2023 and brought the cofounders – Sridhar and Vivek – on board.

It was Sridhar Ramaswamy, an IIT Madras graduate, whose fire in the belly, passion for new technologies, and prior experience of machine learning development were among the building blocks of Google’s advertising empire. In 2003, he joined Google with a treasure of experience as a researcher and a database analyst from Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, and Epiphany, Inc. He became a part of the American workforce after having earned a master’s degree and PhD in computer science from Brown University, an Ivy League research university in Rhode Island.

“A lot has been told and written about Indian-origin CEOs leading enterprises over US$1 trillion. A documentary should now be made on what makes Indians astute business leaders and global CEOs, from Laxman Narasimhan at Starbucks to YouTube CEO Neal Mohan to Edelweiss AMC’s MD & CEO Radhika Gupta, giving an insight into their certain qualities, such as the art of dealing with cultural intricacies, flexible adaptability, expertise in making multicultural collaborations, the trait of treating a team like family, etc.,” said Sourav Agarwal, the Editor of Travel Beats.

The post Sridhar Ramaswamy, Who Drove Google’s Ads Revenue to $100bn, Becomes First Indian American CEO of Snowflake appeared first on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

The world often wonders what makes overseas Indians secure seats in the C-suite of global conglomerates, earn big paychecks, and eventually, become billionaires. Various interpretations and views are boiled down to the inference that they were raised to be disciplined and dedicated during their journey from humble beginnings to mighty goals. This is also true about Indian American Nikesh Arora, who recently inducted himself into the club of billionaire CEOs.

Billionaire Nikesh Arora is the CEO and Chairman of Palo Alto Networks, a leading cybersecurity MNC headquartered in California. The $125 million stock and options that he received after joining Palo Alto in June 2018 has more than quadrupled to $830 million, riding the back of a huge demand for cybersecurity software solutions that boomed in the wake of high-profile hacking events in various industries, according to a Bloomberg report.

PC: IIT BHU, Varanasi

Combined with his investments and previous remunerations, the current worth of his enviable stake in Palo Alto Networks catapulted him into the elite club of billionaire tech leaders. Precisely, Nikesh Arora’s net worth is $1.5 billion, which places him beside Alphabet Inc.’s CEO Sundar Pichai and among the richest Indian Americans. His ‘lady luck’ at Palo Alto continues to run high as he is entitled to 750,000 stock awards as part of his compensation in 2023, as far as his performance is concerned.

The current value of the above award stock would probably stand at over $220 million. “Because of this significant vested ownership and the amount that Mr. Arora was projected to vest in over the next several years, the Board determined that a meaningful equity award would be necessary to ensure that such award retains and engages Mr. Arora,” the Bloomberg report adds.

Nikesh Arora’s impressive journey had no rosy start

CEO Nikesh Arora’s epic journey from rejections to survival with a few hundred dollars to the American C-suite is one of discipline, determination, and dedication. Obviously, he did not have a rosy start back home (India). Born to an officer in the Indian Air Force, Mr Arora had a disciplined upbringing, which played an important role in charting the course of his life and career, starting from a B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT BHU, Varanasi.

Driven by his passion for technology and business, he travelled to the United States in 1989. He earned an MS in finance from Boston College and an MBA degree from Northeastern University, strengthening his business acumen in the tech industry. His profound knowledge of finance and international business in the ever-changing tech landscape shaped and pushed his career through ranks at Google and Softbank during the dot-com period and in the aftermath of the 2008 Great Recession.

Nikesh Arora – Google’s highest paid C-suite executive in 2012

His decade-long epic career at Google started with his role of leading the search giant’s European operations from 2004 until 2017. The back-to-back senior leadership roles accelerated his rise to becoming the chief business officer – the fourth important player in Google’s core leadership team comprising Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt. He explored new markets and partnerships for Google’s advertisement verticals including display ads. His astute business strategies attracted scores of advertisers for YouTube’s revenue growth 10 years before Indian American Neal Mohan became CEO of Google’s video sharing platform in early 2023.

In 2013, Nikesh Arora became a popular face on the cover page of leading business magazines as Google’s highest-paid key executive with a compensation package of nearly $58 million in cash and stock. After pushing the envelope of Google’s advertisement business until 2014, he joined Softbank Group as President in quest of bigger challenges and responsibilities. He created history by having become the first Indian-origin President on the board of Softbank Group. Today’s billionaire Arora led Softbank’s investments in India’s tech startups including Ola Cabs, Oyo Rooms, Grofers, Snapdeal, and Housing.com.

He is more known as a business leader and investor than a globetrotter. Few Silicon Valley professionals know that he is an avid traveler with his diary crammed with moments of business class travel to more than 60 countries. He has many miles to go as both a leader and a traveler.

The post Nikesh Arora, Electrical Engineering Graduate from India, Enters the Club of Billionaire CEOs in America appeared first on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

The Indian American CEO of Genpact, a leading global business transformation service provider, is hanging up his boots. Another Indian American is taking over the reins of Genpact as next CEO. The winning streak of Indian-origin business leaders at securing a C-suite seat at global tech giants continues with Balkrishan Kalra being named as CEO of Genpact headquartered in New York City.

Balkrishan Kalra, who hails from Punjab, is all set to join the growing cohort of Indian American CEOs helming multinational corporations, including Google, Microsoft, IBM, Adobe, Micron Technology, NetApp, Zscaler, FedEx, Starbucks, Verizon, and Chanel. Ravi Kumar as Cognizant’s CEO, Neal Mohan as YouTube’s CEO, Vimal Kapur as Honeywell’s CEO, and Rahul Roy-Chowdhury as Grammarly’s CEO ascended the hot seat of CEO this year.

Unlike his contemporaries in the C-suite of America, BK Kalra is neither an IIM graduate nor an IIT alumnus. He does not even have a degree from a prestigious American school. He graduated from Panjab University with a master’s degree in Business Administration and began his career as an investment banker in New Delhi. He will continue to render his services to Genpact as its Global Business and Digital Transformation leader until he takes office as CEO on February 9, 2024.

“BK has been an integral part of Genpact’s success, and I am confident that, under his leadership, we are well-positioned for the next phase of our journey and future growth,” said Tiger Thyagarajan, who is retiring as CEO of Genpact in February after 12 years at the helm. The current President and CEO, Tiger Thyagarajan, will be serving as a member of the Board of Directors after stepping down from his position.

Genpact’s new CEO Balkrishan Kalra got the opportunity to pursue his American Dream in 1999 when he joined General Electric, a Boston-headquartered MNC, as its global operations leader for banking and insurance. The turning point in his career came after 6 years when he was appointed as Vice President for Consumer Goods and Life Sciences at Genpact, then a new division of General Electric, in 2005. There had been no looking back since then.

With Genpact’s phenomenal growth from $4 million revenues to $4.37 billion in 2022, he rose through ranks on the corporate ladder “helping companies grow from idea conceptualization into large globally competitive enterprises.” A certified Lean 6 Sigma Black Belt, Kalra is a leading member of the seed team that founded Genpact and transformed it into a business transformation leader for Fortune 500 companies. In his nearly 20-year association with Genpact, BK Kalra has led business-critical digital transformation initiatives across various verticals including banking, finance, retail, healthcare, consumer goods, capital markets, and life sciences.

NV Thyagarajan initiated an investment of $600 million in generative artificial intelligence and data science over the next three years. As the succeeding CEO of Genpact, BK Kalra will be overseeing this initiative for smooth transition into AI. “He understands the importance of investing in emerging trends and technologies with a particular focus on AI-enabled solutions. BK’s strategic vision and deep understanding of our clients and business is exactly what Genpact needs as we enter this new chapter,” said Chairman James Madden.

The post Genpact Appoints Indian American Balkrishan Kalra as CEO, who has no Prestigious or Fancy Degree appeared first on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

Fortune favors the brave and the bold. This maxim is true about four Indian American business women who Forbes’ 2023 list features among America’s self-made richest women. The collective fortunes of the USA’s self-made richest women, including four Indian-origin entrepreneurs, rose to $118 billion by 31%. 26 of the richest self-made women in the US are now billionaires, including two Indian Americans.

Jayshree Ullal, the President and CEO of cloud networking firm Arista Networks, is the richest of all Indian American business women. Her net worth soared to US$ 2.2bn in 2023 from $1.9 billion in 2022. One of the four Indian-origin women on Forbes’ 2023 list of America’s richest self-made women, Jayshree Ullal drove Arista Networks’ revenues from $1.1 billion in 2016 to $4.381 billion in 2022, with her leadership. She featured among Barron’s World’s Best CEOs in 2018 and Fortune’s Top 20 Business Persons in 2019.

The winner of the ‘Ernst and Young US Entrepreneur of the Year’ award in 2015, Jayshree was born in London and raised in New Delhi. She graduated in electrical engineering from San Francisco State University and studied masters in engineering management at Santa Clara University. Forbes Magazine previously named her ‘one of the five most influential people in the networking industry.’

Neerja Sethi with a net worth of $1 billion, is the second richest Indian American business woman based in Florida. She was the Director and a co-founder of Syntel Inc., a prestigious IT consulting and outsourcing company. Her journey from Troy, Michigan where she co-founded Syntel at her residence with an initial investment of $2000 in 1980, to Forbes’ 2023 list of America’s richest self-made women makes an incredible success story. Acquired by a French IT firm for $3.4 billion in 2018, Syntel currently employs about 23,000 people around the world, 80% of which is in India.

Neha Narkhede from Pune, Maharashtra is a self-made tech entrepreneur and leading startup advisor with a net worth of $520 million. Though her fortune dropped from $925 in 2022, she secured a place among America’s richest business women on Forbes’ 2023 list. She Narkhede is one of the few who quit high-paying jobs to venture out as entrepreneurs. In 2014, she quit her LinkedIn career as the Lead of Streams Infrastructure to co-found Confluent as a streaming data technology startup in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2017, she created Apache Kafka to help conglomerates like Uber, Netflix, and Goldman Sachs to process a huge influx of data.

Named one of the world’s top 50 Women in Tech by Forbes, Neha Narkhede believes that being a little deaf to criticism and skepticism is a survival strategy in any male-dominated field. When she was growing up, her father laid the foundation of her future. Once she told CNBC, “When I was growing up, he selected books from different walks of life and told me stories of women who were trailblazers in very male-dominated fields. I read books about Indira Gandhi, Dr. Kiran Bedi, Indra Nooyi, and Kalpana Chawla. Reading their stories cultivated a sense of empowerment in me.”

With a net worth of $350 million, Indra Nooyi needs no introduction. Though she retired as CEO of PepsiCo in 2018, she is still a powerful influencer. She was featured on Time Magazine and Forbes’ lists of the world’s most powerful women in business several times. Born in Chennai (then Madras), she has been a hard-working professional since the days when she worked the graveyard shift as a dorm receptionist to make a living.

“When you have a competence that nobody else has, you become more valuable” is her message to every budding professional. In 2021, Indra Nooyi was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in New York. Her treasure trove of achievements includes Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters and Honorary Doctorate of Law from several prestigious US universities. India conferred Padma Bhushan on her in 2007. She serves on the foundation board of the World Economic Forum, and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Dr. Reshma Shetty whose net worth has dropped to nearly $100M in 2023 from $750 million in 2022, is not on Forbes’ 2023 list of America’s richest self-made women. She is a co-founder of Gingko Bioworks, a synthetic biotechnology company in the Greater Boston Area. She started her journey as a graduate research assistant from MIT and went on to cofound Gingko Bioworks along with scientists from MIT under the supervision of Tom Knight, a former senior research scientist at the MIT School of Engineering. Gingko Bioworks specializes in using genetic engineering to produce bacteria with industrial applications and make new organisms. Dr. Reshma Shetty believes that answers to various challenges in health, food, energy and likes are lying hidden in the deep recesses of nature’s biodiversity. Gingko Bioworks’ value stands at $4.2 billion, as of 2019.

This story is part of Travel Beats’ continued effort to promote achievements of Indian Diaspora in the US. Travel Beats, a leading community portal for Indians in America, is a subsidiary of the most trusted travel-booking portal, IndianEagle.com. Sign up to our newsletter for the latest air travel updates, transit stopover guides, community stories, US visa and immigration news.

The post Fortune Favors the Brave: 4 Indian American Women on Forbes 2023 List of America’s Most Successful Women appeared first on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

Indian-origin leaders are not mere cogs in the giant wheels of the US economy. Bearing testimony to this is the growing cohort of Indian American CEOs, that recently welcomed Honeywell’s CEO Vimal Kapur. Announcing a new era of leadership, Grammarly – a Silicon Valley unicorn worth US$ 15 billion – is handing over the baton of its CEO to Indian American Rahul Roy-Chowdhury. Precisely, Grammarly Inc. headquartered in San Francisco will see its global head of product, Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, as its new CEO from May 1.

PC: Bloomberg.com

Grammarly, a cloud-based technology company helping students and professionals communicate with confidence, is at the cusp of revolution in artificial intelligence. The growing popularity of Microsoft-backed ChatGPT that emerged as a most disruptive AI technology is a threat to Grammarly and similar companies, according to industry experts. This seems to have brought Grammarly to an inflection point where leadership transition is key to introducing a brand new artificial intelligence tool as Grammarly’s competitive edge over others.

“Now is the ideal time for this transition. Grammarly is a deeply technical, product-led company. Rahul’s product and technology background is a tremendous asset. He is well-positioned to help us navigate the path ahead. He is also mission-driven and fiercely user-focused. His experience and learnings from building Google Chrome into a user-friendly platform can help us move faster at scale. Under Rahul’s leadership, we took a big step forward with our product, enhanced quality and introduced solutions to help beyond the revision stage of communication,” said Grammarly’s outgoing CEO Brad Hoover.

Indian-origin Rahul Roy-Chowdhury joined Grammarly, Inc. as Global Head of Product after 14 years at Google. He had landed a career opportunity as product manager at Google’s Bangalore office in 2007. After two years of service in India, he moved to the Googleplex, Alphabet Inc.’s corporate headquarters with an Indian restaurant named Baadal in Mountain View, California. He climbed up a step on the corporate ladder every two years, from Product Manager in 2007 to Vice President of Product Management in 2019. His travel from Bangalore to San Francisco was the turning point in his pursuit of American Dream.

“In the past two years of his leadership at Grammarly, Rajul has focused on driving excellence and helped us up-level as a company. He has pushed our thinking and driven the organization forward with clarity, keen judgement, and sound decision-making,” said Brad Hoover eloquently. Rahul studied MBA at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and earned an MS degree in computer science from Columbia University.

In order to stay in the race with ChatGPT and its advanced model GPT-4, Grammarly, Inc. is all set to release GrammarlyGO – the next-gen model of communication assistance with generative AI capabilities – in April 2023. It is Grammarly’s new CEO Rahul Roy-Chowdhury who headed the product development team for GrammarlyGO that claims to instantly generate a high-quality draft on any topic based on a prompt with a few words and new versions of an existing write-up. Rahul, who believes in ethical AI development, says that “effective communication is vital” for every phase of a business’ journey.

The post US-based Grammarly’s New CEO is Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, Google’s Former Vice President of Product Management appeared first on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.

The Indian American community continues to flex its leadership muscle. We’re only two months and a half into 2023; three Indian Americans have put on the garb of global CEOs since the beginning of the new year. Cognizant’s CEO Ravi Kumar and YouTube’s CEO Neal Mohan are the first and the second, respectively. The third and newest being Vimal Kapur who Honeywell International has named as its global CEO. Indian American Vimal Kapur, 57, will take over as CEO of Honeywell on June 1.

PC: Barrons.com

He assumed the role of Honeywell’s President and Chief Operating Officer nine months ago. “In this role, he created new solutions to help customers drive their sustainability and accelerate their digital transformation journeys. In addition, he oversaw Honeywell’s Operating System, Honeywell Accelerator, and the company’s strategic business groups. Prior to that, he held several leadership positions in the $130bn company that deals in advanced consumer technology and productivity solutions. The key positions that he has held till date include Managing Director for Honeywell Automation India Limited.

Just like Puneet Renjen who spent his entire career at Deloitte, Honeywell International’s new CEO Vimal Kapur started his career as a General Manager in Pune and went on to climb the corporate ladder. “Kapur brings 34 years of profound knowledge about our businesses, markets and customer needs. His ability to drive our key sustainability and digitalization strategic initiatives, along with his advancement of our world class operating system – Honeywell Accelerator – throughout the organization, gives him an outstanding platform to drive continued performance for our stakeholders,” said Darius Adamczyk who will serve as Executive Chairman to help with leadership transition.

Vimal Kapur, who graduated as an electronics engineer from the Thapar Institute of Engineering in Punjab, was the Vice President of Honeywell Process Solutions. Thereafter, he became President of Honeywell Process Solutions and continued in the same role for 4 years before he was promoted to President and CEO of Honeywell Building Technologies in the Greater Atlanta Area. After 3 years in that position, he moved to Houston, Texas as President and CEO of Honeywell Performance Materials & Technologies. In July 2022, he was given a more responsible designation – President and Chief Operating Officer.

Subscribe to Travel Beats, a leading overseas Indian community portal, for Indian Diaspora stories, US visa & immigration news, and updates on air travel. Travel Beats is a subsidiary of Indian Eagle, a trusted air-ticketing partner of several major airlines offering the best deals for economy and business class air tickets to India round the year.

The post Indian American Vimal Kapur Joins Club of Indian-origin CEOs as Head of Honeywell International appeared first on Travel to India, Cheap Flights to India, Aviation News, India Travel Tips.