IT is Her Success Story
Jayshree Ullal is a self-made Indian-American billionaire businesswoman, based in California, US. Since 2008, she is the President and CEO of Arista Networks, a computer networking company, which is headquartered in Santa Clara, California.
To Arista Networks goes the credit for the deployment of 10/25/40/50/100 Gigabit Ethernet networking in the data center. If one were to ask what is the profession of Jayshree Ullal it would be apt to describe her as a top-notch executive and an entrepreneur.
About Jayshree Ullal
Jayshree was born in London, in 27th March 1961 to physicist Sudarajan Vedantham and Nirmala Vedantham. She did spend the first five years of her life there. But she spent her schooling years in Delhi, India, at Convent of Jesus & Mary. She graduated with a B.S. in electrical engineering from San Francisco State University. Jayshree got her master’s degree in engineering management from Santa Clara University in California
She began her career in the early 1980s with Advanced Micro Devices and then she joined Fairchild Semiconductor. She designed high-speed memory chips for IBM and Hitachi. Thereafter she moved to Ungermann-Bass, in 1988, as her interests grew in marketing. At that time, Ungermann-Bass used to garner 40 million USD a year by developing and selling networking products. With Ungermann-Bass, Jayshree was Director of Internetworking Products for four years.
It was followed by her tenure with Crescendo Communications, a computer networking company. At Crescendo Communications she got her first big break as Vice President of Marketing. With Crescendo, Jayshree was working with the first CDDI products and first-generation Ethernet switching.
In 1993, Cisco Systems purchased Crescendo Communications, which was Cisco’s first acquisition into the switching market. Jayshree joined Cisco and started working on the Cisco Catalyst switching business.
At Cisco Systems, Jayshree facilitated to enhance the company’s switching business to 5 billion USD in annual sales. In her tenure with Cisco, she oversaw more than 20 mergers and acquisitions. Jayshree went on to become the Senior Vice President of Data Center & Switching at Cisco Systems. In that capacity, she directly reported to John Chambers, the then CEO of Cisco Systems. She worked with Cisco Systems for more than 15 years.
During her tenure with Cisco Systems as Senior Vice President of Data Center & Switching, Jayshree was responsible for the company’s business in datacenter, switching and services.
Jayshree Ullal was appointed as the CEO and President of cloud networking startup Arista Networks in 2008, which she has facilitated to grow into a global leader in networking technology over the years, led through her uncommon vision. When Jayshree joined the then four-year-old Arista Networks it was a company comprising of only 50 people with paucity of revenues. Jayshree can be credited for facilitating Arista Networks develop into a specialized market leader in Ethernet switches and open-source cloud software.
Under Jayshree’s leadership, Arista Networks had its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014. Arista Networks attained revenues of 2.4 billion USD in 2019. Her innings with Arista Networks should be regarded as the most important chapter in the biography of Jayshree Ullal.
Thenews on Jayshree Ullal informs that she owns about 5 percent of stocks of Arista, some of which is set aside for her two children, niece and nephew.
Named as one of Barron’s “World’s Best CEOs” in 2018 and one of Fortune’s “Top 20 Business Persons” in 2019, Jayshree joined the board of directors of a cloud computing company named Snowflake that went public in September 2020.
Among the many other prestigious awards and recognitions won by her over the years, E&Y’s ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ award in 2015 deserves special mention. Jayshree was also honored with the SFSU and SCU Distinguished Alumni Awards in 2013 and 2016 respectively.
The business leader believes that in these times interdisciplinary fields are more important than ever and urges young people to broaden their skill sets.
FAQs
The age of Jayshree Ullal is 60 years.
According to Forbes, Jayshree Ullal’s real time net worth as of 12th September 2021 was a whopping 2.1 billion USD. She is one of the wealthiest female executives in the US.
Yes, she is. Her husband’s name is Vijay Ullal. They have two daughters.
She was born in London.
No, she is an US citizen of Indian heritage.
