Jayshree V. Ullal, an Indian-American woman, has made it to the recent Forbes list of America’s 100 most successful and richest self-made women, ranking 15th on the list. She is the president and CEO of Arista Networks, a cloud networking company headquartered in Silicon Valley. Under Ullal’s leadership, Arista Networks recorded nearly $4.4 billion in revenue in 2022. She owns about 2.4% of Arista’s stocks and is also on the board of directors of Snowflake, a cloud computing company that went public in September 2020.
In an interview with the Times of India, Ullal shared her belief in the “Arista Way,” which involves doing the right thing for employees, customers, and shareholders. She is passionate about her company’s policy of carefully planning hiring with no massive lay-offs, and she believes strongly in treating top performers differently from the bottom ones. Ullal also addressed the challenges of US immigration rules faced by Indian professionals, emphasizing the need for change in the immigration process. Despite the added value that Indian immigrants bring to the US, Ullal acknowledges the unfortunate reality of stalled immigration processes and the recent uncertainty many younger professionals from India are facing.
Additionally, Ullal empathized with families affected by recent lay-offs in the US, noting the risk and reality of coming to work in a foreign country. Despite the challenges, she remains upbeat about Indian and Indian American talent at Arista, emphasizing that India is an equal citizen with equal opportunities for the company. As a thought and business leader, Ullal has observed the rise of artificial intelligence and is focused on building Arista’s network to be more AI relevant for large data and compute intensive applications.