Jayshree Ullal
Jayshree V. Ullal (born March 27, 1961) is an American billionaire businesswoman, president, and CEO of Arista Networks, a cloud networking company.
Ullal was born in London and raised in New Delhi, India through her schooling years. She eventually attended San Francisco State University where she graduated with a B.S. in engineering (electrical). She went on to Santa Clara University where she received a master's degree in engineering management.
Ullal began her career with engineering and strategy positions at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Fairchild Semiconductor. She was a director of internetworking products at Ungermann-Bass for four years before joining Crescendo Communications. At Crescendo, Ullal became vice president of marketing, working with 100-Mbit/s over copper, the first CDDI products and first-generation Ethernet switching.
In September 1993, Cisco Systems acquired Crescendo Communications, marking Cisco’s first acquisition and foray into the switching market. Ullal joined Cisco and began work on the Cisco Catalyst switching business, which grew from its beginning, in 1993, to a $5 billion business in 2000. As vice president and general manager of LAN switching in the Enterprise group, Ullal was responsible for unified communications, IP telephony, content networking and policy networking. She oversaw some 20 mergers and acquisitions for Cisco in the enterprise sector.
Ullal was eventually named Senior Vice President of Data Center & Switching, reporting to John Chambers. Responsibilities included the direction of the modular Nexus and Catalyst Data Center Switching and Application/Virtualization services which saw about $15 billion of direct and indirect revenue. Ullal’s career at Cisco spanned for more than 15 years.
In October 2008, co-founders Andy Bechtolsheim & David Cheriton named Ullal CEO & President of Arista Networks, a cloud networking company located in Santa Clara, CA.
Ullal was named by Forbes magazine as "one of the top five most influential people in the networking industry today" for her work at Arista Networks.
In June 2014, Ullal led Arista Networks to an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ANET.
Awards and honors
- One of the 50 Most Powerful People in the 2005 Network World
- A Top Ten Executive in VMWorld 2011
- A Women of Influence award for Security CSOs in 2008
- One of the Top Women in Storage in 2007
- Nominated as one of the 20 powerful Women to Watch in 2001 by Newsweek
- 2001 Innovator and Influencer Award by Information Week
- First woman to be awarded the Entrepreneurial and Leadership award, sponsored by Silicon India, in 1999
- One of the seven prominent Indian-origin women in the IT industry, according to The Economic Times
- Recipient of the 2013 Santa Clara University School of Engineering Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award]
- Ranked #2 in Top 25 Disrupters of 2014 list by CRN
- EY US Entrepreneur Of The Year Award Winner 2015
- World’s Best CEOs: Growth Leaders 2018
- 1 on Masala's MOST INFLUENTIAL Asian Women in America list
- Named to Barron’s “World’s Best CEOs” list in 2018 and 2019.
Click on the two links given below to be inspired by her.