ET Women’s Forum: Tech leaders believe Covid can be an opportunity for women to upskill

For the first time in three decades, NASSCOM appointed their first ever women President, Debjani Ghosh, in April 2018. She has been a strong advocate of gender diversity in the workplace. Before taking up the NASSCOM responsibility, she had worked with Intel Corporation for nearly two decades. A veteran in the field of technology, her endeavour is to make the domain of technology a level playing field. She plans to stress on innovation and skill development to enable individuals and enterprises to make the most of AI and Machine Learning. Her appointment to this position is a huge step in the direction of including women in the higher rungs of technology, which is otherwise male dominated.

With the tech industry experiencing rapid growth, Deepa Madhavan believes that it's the right time for women to join forces to ensure a fair say in decision making. Before joining PayPal, Madhavan worked with Deloitte, and took a break to raise her three children. Deepa Madhavan, who has a Bachelors in Economics and a Masters in Computer Science, is also the force behind causes like 'Girls In Tech' and 'Unity'.

As her name suggests, Padmasree is a true warrior. A role model for girls, she is the former CEO of NIO U.S., a Chinese electric car company which is considered Tesla's biggest rival. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors at Microsoft and Spotify. In the past, Warrior has also worked with Cisco and Motorola. Motorola Inc received a National Medal of Technology in 2004 when she was the CEO of the company. With 1.46 million followers on Twitter, she continues to mentor scores of women who dream of building a career in the field of technology.

Roshni Nadar Malhotra is the HCL heiress and an IT stalwart. Born to Shiv Nadar and Kiran Nadar, Roshni was always sure of being a part of the empire that her parents created. She provides strategic guidance to HCL and is also closely associated with the philanthropic arm of the IT conglomerate. She manages to strike the perfect balance between her work, personal life and philanthropic activities with ease and efficiency. She became the CEO of the organisation at 28, and took a break when she became a mom to two doting sons. Promoting diversity in HCL is one of her biggest goals, and she hopes to see more women in the domain of technology.

Rubbing shoulders with the men from the big, bad world of tech, Ginni Rometty has managed to carve a niche for herself in the technology industry. In a men-dominated industry, Rometty has been heading the computer giant since 2012. She has successfully featured in lists like, '50 Most Influential People in the World' and '50 Most Powerful Women in Business'. Ever since her leadership in IBM, she has managed to lead the company on the path of success. It was reported that the company was in the pits when she took over in 2012. Her commitment to diversity and inclusion has resulted in a sea change in IBM's work culture. The company offers extended parental leave to women, makes it easier for them return to the workforce, and encourages them to learn new skills to advance their careers. Thanks to their path-breaking work, last year, the company was recognised by the prestigious Catalyst Award for advancing diversity and women’s initiatives. In the past 20 years, it is the only tech company to have been recognised in this category, and the only company that was honoured four times.

A best-selling author and an inspiration to girls all over, Sheryl Sandberg has remained strong even in the face of adversity. While Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg have been struggling with the perils of Cambridge Analytics, Sandberg has been the Rock of Gibraltar for the social media giant. She made it to the 11th position on Forbes Power Women list 2018 and 12th spot on America's Self-Made Women 2018. She recently faced flak for Facebook's involvement in a privacy battle and election hacking, but that hasn't stopped the Facebook COO from aggressively promoting corporate feminism, and advocating #MeToo at work.

With an estimated net worth of $300 million, she began her career with a startup that co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin established in her Menlo Park garage. Since then, Wojcicki has been an integral part of Google. She was the first Google employee to get pregnant. After that, she took the opportunity to change the parental leave policy at the company. Maternity leave was increased from 18 to 12 weeks in 2007, which reduced the attrition rate of new moms. She hires more women, both at beginning and senior levels to create a continuous cycle of female employees, which in turn helps in improving the work-culture, and reduces attrition in the company.

Whitney Wolfe Herd's dating idea struck gold, and now she has a fortune of nearly $230 million. The app is valued at $1 billion. Herd was also the co-founder of Tinder which she left after claiming sexual harassment by her ex-boyfriend and Tinder co-founder, Justin Mateen. She completely changed how dating apps work with Bumble. In a world of dating apps, she empowered women to reach out to their matches first. Although, she was told that the idea didn't have much steam, nothing could stop her. And, the company's net worth speaks for itself.

Renee James began her career as a R&D engineer, and left the company as the President in 2015. She spent 28 years in the company, and now has her own start-up Ampere which she spearheads as the CEO.