International Women’s Day: Celebrating the Women Leadership in IT Industry

Today marks International Women’s Day. It is a day which globally celebrates the accomplishments and hard work of women in all fields. Be it home, social, economic or political achievements; women are making the same progress in getting equal presence and pay in the workforce as their male counterparts. While men have been dominating most industries, women’s involvement has also been continually increasing, especially in the tech industry.Although tech has always been a predominantly male industry but now organizations are being driven by some of the best and brightest women in the industry.

The main motive behind introducing a specific day called Women’s Day is to mark a call for action to accelerate gender parity. As gender equality focuses on accessing equal rights and opportunities for women, it has been seen that women are already climbing the success ladder with cutting edge ideas and new inventions. They are playing leading roles as founders, venture capitalists and inducing growth by heading top managements.

As International Women's Day celebrates the achievements of women globally; what better way to mark the occasion than celebrating the incredible women who are making a difference with technology in India.

Also read: Editor’s Choice: Celebrating the Women Leadership in IT Industry

Neelam Dhawan, Managing Director, HP India

NeelamDhawan is the Managing Director of Hewlett-Packard India. She has countrywide responsibility for revenues and profitability and ensuring the greatest leverage from HP’s Services, Personal Systems and Imaging and Printing businesses. With a portfolio that extends to offshore activities, BPO, Software Engineering, Research and IT Services, Neelam is focused on shaping the company’s overall business agenda and leading its strategy and corporate development efforts to make HP the most admired company in India.

Previously, Neelam was the Managing Director of Microsoft India, a position she held from 2005 to 2008. Prior to this assignment, Neelam held a variety of successful leadership positions in leading Indian IT companies, including HCL and IBM.

Sushma Rajagopalan, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, ITC Infotech

SushmaRajagopalan is Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director, ITC Infotech. She is also the Chairperson of the NASSCOM IT Services Council India. Sushma has over 30 years of global leadership experience in the Information Technology industry. She has led organizational transformations, headed strategy and corporate development and has been responsible for large deal acquisitions through planned strategic investments.

With a transformational leadership style, Sushma leads from the front, and helps team members realize their true potential by translating strategies into actions. Sushma has won numerous accolades which includes “Innovator in Technology” in 2013 and “Best Technology Woman Leader” in 2011.

Seemantini Godbole, Senior Vice President, Digital and Marketing Technology, TargetIndia

Seemantini Godbole is the Senior Vice President, Digital Technology at Target based out of Bangalore, India. In her current role, Seemantini is responsible for Target.Com, Mobile and Marketing technology teams globally. Her expertise includes technology leadership, digital commerce, complex and large product development, distributed global organization management, vendor evaluation and technology merger integrations. Seemantini is actively invested in Target’s Accelerator Program that guides start-ups develop concepts.

She is also the Sponsor of the Women’s Business Council for Target India which supports the holistic development of women team members and encourages them to take up leadership roles.

Rekha M. Menon, Chairperson and Senior Managing Director, Accenture India

Rekha M. Menon is the Chairman and Senior Managing Director at Accenture in India. In this role, she is responsible for building and strengthening the Accenture footprint in India. She oversees the integration of Accenture's overall growth strategy.

With her experience of more than 24 years in setting-up corporate functions and business operations, Rekha was one of the key architects in building India as Accenture's largest geography.She is also a member of NASSCOM's Executive Council (2015-2017) and is present on the Board of Governors at XLRI School of Business, Jamshedpur. Rekha featured in the list of LinkedIn Power Profiles in India for 2016. She was also named among India's Most Powerful Women of 2014 by Business Today.

Vanitha Narayanan, Chairman, IBM India Private Limited

Vanitha Narayanan is the Chairman of IBM India. A fresh edition to the Women’s Day list, she was recently appointed to this leadership position in January 2017. IBM will rely on her leadership to engage and further strengthen the Government and Regulatory affairs initiatives.

In her earlier role as Managing Director of IBM India Private Limited, and Regional General Manager of IBM India/ South Asia, Vanitha was responsible for all of IBM's sales, marketing, services and global delivery operations in the India/South Asia region, including operations in Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.More recently, she was named among the 12 Global Indian Super Women of 2016 by CXOToday, as one of the ‘Most Powerful Women’ in Business in India (2016) by Business Today.

Valli Bollavaram, Vice President, Enterprise Data and Business Intelligence Engineering, Target India

Valli Bollavaram is the Vice President, Enterprise Data and Business Intelligence Engineering at Target India. Out of the several leadership positions which she held at Target since 2013, she is responsible for the strategic and operational aspects of Enterprise Data and Business Intelligence Engineering, and has teams reporting to her based out of Bangalore, Minneapolis and Sunnyvale.

Valli has over 20 years of experience in the IT sector and has been a strategic technology partner, collaborating with business leaders to create business strategy by leveraging technology. She excels at building high-performing global teams with an emphasis on building alocation agnostic culture.

Aarthi Subramanian, Global Head of Delivery Excellence Group, Executive Director, TCS

Aarthi Subramanian is the Global Head of Delivery Excellence Group responsible for governance of service delivery, compliance and risk management.Prior to this role, Aarthi was the head of Delivery for seven years with the TCS Retail & CPG Business unit. Aarthi has played a key role in setting up SAP Center of Excellence in Chennai.

Aarthi started her career as a graduate trainee in TCS in 1989. She went on to become an analyst, project manager and then moved from a Delivery Manager to a Senior Executive role in TCS. During her 25 year career, she has worked in diverse roles in India, Sweden, US and Canada and has rich experience in Account Management, Delivery and Large Program Management. Aarthi also had a stint of over five years with Informix Software.

Aruna Jayanthi, Business Services, Capgemini Group

CEO of Business Services of Capgemini Group,Aruna is the Chairperson of Board of Governors of National Institute of Technology Calicut since November 2014.Jayanthi oversees the operations across India and supports the Capgemini Group's growth agenda and strengthen India's position as an industrialization and innovation hub. She is responsible for operations across all the business units – Consulting, Technology and Outsourcing services in India with a focus to increase the integration and performance of over 40,000 growing employee.

Previously, she served as a Global Delivery Officer for Capgemini Outsourcing. Jayanthi oversees the operations across all the business units – Consulting, Technology services and Outsourcing services in India with a focus to increase the integration and performance of over 40,000 growing employee base

Prarthana Gupta, Managing Director, Cache Technologies

Prarthana Gupta is an engineer by profession who entered the world of business because she was into repairing hardware. A perfect candidate to feature for Women’s Day, she is the woman entrepreneur who turned the domestic company Cache Technologies into a global enterprise. Prarthana has taken the initiative to create her enterprise for end-to-end automation.

She is the founder of CIDIF, an enlisted non-profit organization which has partnered together with the government, IT organizations, industry, and IT experts to reinforce India’s technology foundation. CIDIF was framed with the reason for identifying and delivering solutions that help address the employability challenge with the vision of Digital India.

Shikha Rai, Vice President, Human Resources, Canon India

Shikha Rai is the Vice President of Canon India Pvt Ltd, where she spearheads the company’s Human Resources and IT operations. Her role at Canon encompasses aligning the IT strategies with the business to give a competitive edge. She also heads the administration team and looks at the infrastructure requirements.

An industry veteran, Shikha has more than 27 years of experience. She has been associated with Canon India for the last fourteen years. Previously, Shikha was a mechanical engineer with transformer shopfloor of BHEL in Bhopal. She has also worked with Bausch & Lomb factory  as the MRP project manager rolling out the MRP system for production; and later as the IT Manager. Also in Duracell where she headed the IT function at Manesar.