6 Indian Women in Business Who Studied Abroad and Made it Big!

There is a growing trend of women choosing to study abroad. Why? As companies look for gender diversity within their workforce, and women rise to the challenge, many women have managed to climb the rungs with the help of professional expertise and top class education. Here are 5 Indian women in business, who began their journey with education abroad. Read their stories to find your path of success.

1. Padmasree Warrior

Padmasree Warrior is an achiever of international repute. She made a humble beginning as in Motorola’s semiconductor factory. By 1984, Warrior rose to become the CTO and Executive VP at Motorola in 2003, the highest-ranking woman in the company’s history. Warrior was the CEO of NIO U.S., a company that deals in high-performance, electric-powered smart cars. Today,Padmasree Warrior is the Founder, President and CEO at Fable.

With an undergraduate in Delhi, Padmasree Warrior went to the United States to do her graduate work at Cornell. She did not end up finishing her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at Cornell, as she found a job at Motorola.

Warrior was named one of the 15 Most Powerful Women in Tech by Forbes in 2013, and made the list of World’s Most Powerful Women in both 2014 and 2015.

2. Rashmi Sinha

Heard of SlideShare? If you have been regularly using it for your professional presentations or thesis, you have the affable Rashmi Sinha to thank for.

Rashmi Sinha, a Lucknow resident, earned her Ph.D. in cognitive neuropsychology at Brown University. There, Rashmi took computer science courses with Andy van Dam, which gave her some exposure to the HCI (human-computer interaction). Sinha also went to the University of California, Berkeley for a postdoctoral program, where she switched her focus to human-computer interaction.

3. Gargee Ghosh

Gargee began her journey as a graduate in economics from the University of Oxford and in international relations from Georgetown University, and a bachelor’s degree holder in economics from the University of Victoria in Canada. Today, Gargee Ghosh works as the Director of Development Policy and Finance at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Under her stewardship, the Foundation develops and funds innovative ideas to make finance more effective in solving the problems of extreme poverty around the world. It also oversees Gates Foundation relationships with multilateral development banks, aid policy bodies, and economic decision-makers in the developing world.

Gargee previously held senior positions at Google.org and in the international development practice of McKinsey & Company, as well as at the Center for Global Development. Gargee also completed a two-year term on President Obama’s Global Development Council and she sits on the U.S. board of Camfed.

4. Anjali Joshi

With a Masters at Stanford University and from State University of New York and Engineering degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Anjali has a formidable educational background to back up her stupendous rise in her career.

Today, Anjali Joshi is the Vice President of Product Management at Google, where she leads groups focused on the software, network and computing infrastructure, translation products and internationalization/localization of Google products. Ms. Joshi was integral in managing Google’s Fiber to Communities effort. Joshi has over 10 years of experience in Google and she is fiercely known for being an engineer who can handle any kind of problems in the organization.

5. Kirthiga Reddy

Born to middle-class parents (Kirthiga father was a government employee), Kirthiga Reddy had to struggle her way to the top. She finished her Bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering, where she stood second in her school.

After a brief working stint, Reddy moved to the United States and did her Master’s in business administration from Stanford University and an M.S. in computer engineering from Syracuse University.

Kirthiga joined as the first Facebook India employee in July 2010 and set up the India operations in Hyderabad. As the first employee of the company, not only did she start the India operations from scratch but also had to open the office shutters on day one. She is also the former Managing Director of Facebook in India.

Today, Kirthiga Reddy is an investment partner at SoftBank. She has been featured in Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business 2013, Business Today’s hottest young executives, Fortune India’s Top 50 Most Powerful Women in India, #1 in IMPACT’s 50 Most Influential Women list in media, marketing and advertising 2015.

6. Indira Nooyi

The face of PepsiCo, Indira Nooyi needs no introduction. Chennai-born Indra Nooyi graduated from the prestigious IIM Calcutta. She applied for another post-graduate degree at the Ivy League – Yale University. Indra Nooyi completed her master’s degree in Public and Private Management from the Yale School of Management. Post her education, she went on to work with the Boston Consulting Group, Motorola, and Asea Brown Boveri, before joining PepsiCo in 1994 and building an enviable career for herself.