Padmasree Warrior is the Chief Technology Officer of Cisco Systems, (NASDAQ:CSCO) and the former CTO of Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT). She is an external director on the Board of Corning Corporation (NYSE:GLW). In 2001 she was one of six women nationwide selected to receive the "Women Elevating Science and Technology" award from Working Woman Magazine.citation needed She is one of the highest ranking female Indian executives in the US technology industry and has frequently credited her heritage as an advantage. [1]
Career
When named Motorola's CTO in January 2003, she became Motorola’s first female executive vice president - overseeing a small portion of the research and product development efforts of the company. Padmasree joined Motorola in 1984, as one of a few women in its Arizona facility. Before becoming CTO, Warrior held a variety of positions including corporate vice president and general manager of Motorola’s energy systems group, where she was responsible for profit and loss, sales, marketing, engineering and manufacturing.
Her prior position in Motorola was as general manager of Thoughtbeam, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Motorola, which was chartered to commercialize GaAs on silicon technology that was developed in the semiconductor sector of Motorola.
Warrior also served as corporate vice president and chief technology officer for Motorola’s Semiconductor Products Sector (SPS) which is now Freescale.
For much of her tenure as Motorola CTO, in speeches and Powerpoint slideshows she was a profound proponent of "Seamless Mobility" - the concept of having seamless communication across all facets of a person's life. The dream was not fully realized and the concept was eventually dropped from Motorola marketing presentations. She also is known for criticizing, in her blog "Bits on my Edge"[2], the Apple iPhone, which later became a huge success in the cell phone industry. Despite these errors, she had success at Motorola by facilitating a strong growth of engineering talent from developing countries such as India[3] and China[4] [5]. This allowed Motorola to achieve short term benefits in terms of lower average wages[6] [7] in their research endeavors and helped spur the technology industries of these countries[8].
On December 4, 2007 she left Motorola to become CTO at Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO). Some people in the industry, including Cisco CEO John Chambers, consider her addition to Cisco to be advantageous because of her industry voice and marketing ability. [9].
Family
Padmasree Warrior is married to Mohandas Warrior, CEO of a Madison, Wisconsin based company called Alfalight. They have a 15 year old son named Karna Warrior.
Education
Born and Raised in Vijayawada in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, India, Warrior did her schooling at the Children’s Montessori School and Maris Stella College in Vijayawada. Warrior received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, from which she was recently recognized with the Distinguished Alumni Award. She holds masters in chemical engineering from Cornell University and serves as an advisory board member at both schools. In 2007 she was honored to receive Doctor of Engineering, Honoris Causa from New York's Polytechnic University.
Recognition
Fortune Magazine called her one of four rising stars on it Most Powerful Women list[1], placing her between the 10 "highest paid" and the "Young and Powerful" categories. Also, the Economic Times recently ranked Padmasree as the 11th Most Influential Global Indian[2]. In 2001 she was one of six women nationwide selected to receive the "Women Elevating Science and Technology" award from Working Woman Magazine[3] and her achievements were further recognized by American Immigration Law Foundation in 2003[4].
Industry & Community Leadership
Padmasree serves on the boards of Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet and Museum of Science and Industry, the Singapore Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Chicago Mayor’s Technology Council, Cornell University Engineering Council and advisory council of Indian Institute of Technology. She previously served on the Texas Governor's Council for Digital Economy, the Technology Advisory Council for the FCC and on the Advisory Committee for the Computing and Information Science and Engineering of the National Science Foundation (NSF). She is also serving as a mentor in the State Department’s International Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership.
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