Jayshree V. Ullal (born March 27, 1961) is a

British-American British Americans usually refers to Americans whose ancestral origin originates wholly or partly in the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland and also the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, and Gibraltar). It is prima ...

billionaire A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least 1,000,000,000, one billion units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. It is a sub-category of the concept of the ultr ...

businesswoman, president and CEO of

Arista Networks Arista Networks, Inc. (formerly Arastra) is an American computer networking company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. The company designs and sells Multilayer switch, multilayer network switches to deliver software-defined networking (SDN) ...

, a cloud networking company responsible for the deployment of 10/ 25/ 40/ 50/ 100/ 400/ 800 Gigabit Ethernet networking in the

data center A data center is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. Since IT operations are crucial for busines ...

Early life and education

Ullal was born on March 27, 1961, in London into a Hindu family of Indian origin. She grew up in

New Delhi New Delhi (; ) is the Capital city, capital of India and a part of the Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Parliament ...

, India, and was schooled at

Convent of Jesus and Mary, Delhi The Convent of Jesus and Mary ("CJM") is a network of Catholic School, Roman Catholic schools founded by the Congregation of the Religious of Jesus and Mary. The school network originating in east-central France in the 19th century has since its ...

. She attended

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is ...

, where she graduated with a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1981. She went on to

Santa Clara University Santa Clara University is a private university, private Jesuit university in Santa Clara, California, United States. Established in 1851, Santa Clara University is the oldest operating institution of higher learning in California. The university' ...

where she received an M.S. in Engineering Management and Leadership in 1986.

Career

Early career

Ullal began her career as a senior strategic development engineer at

Fairchild Semiconductor Fairchild Semiconductor International, Inc. was an American semiconductor company based in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1957 as a division of Fairchild Camera and Instrument by the " traitorous eight" who defected from Shockley Semi ...

and later joined Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), where she designed high-speed memory chips for IBM and Hitachi. In 1988 she joined

Ungermann-Bass Ungermann-Bass, Inc., also known as UB and UB Networks, was a computer networking company in the 1980s to 1990s. Located in Santa Clara, California, UB was the first large networking company independent of any computer manufacturer. Along with co ...

, where she was director of the company's

internetworking Internetworking is the practice of interconnecting multiple computer networks. Typically, this enables any pair of hosts in the connected networks to exchange messages irrespective of their hardware-level networking technology. The resulting sys ...

business unit. In March 1992, Ullal joined

Crescendo Communications In music, the dynamics of a piece are the variation in loudness between notes or phrases. Dynamics are indicated by specific musical notation, often in some detail. However, dynamics markings require interpretation by the performer depending on ...

, a maker of

Fiber Distributed Data Interface Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) is a standard for data transmission in a local area network. It uses optical fiber as its standard underlying physical medium. It was also later specified to use copper cable, in which case it may be c ...

(FDDI) network products, as vice-president of marketing. She helped pioneer 100-Mbit/s Copper Distributed Data Interface (CDDI) products and worked on first-generation Ethernet switching.

Cisco

In September 1993,

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...

acquired Crescendo Communications, marking Cisco's first acquisition and first foray into the switching market. Ullal thereby 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 initiated strategic initiatives such as unified communications, IP telephony, content networking and policy networking. She oversaw some 20 mergers and acquisitions for Cisco in the enterprise sector. By 2005 she became Senior Vice President of the Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group. 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 more than 15 years.

Arista

In October 2008, co-founders

Andy Bechtolsheim Andreas Maria Maximilian Freiherr von Mauchenheim genannt Bechtolsheim (born 30 September 1955) is a German electrical engineer, entrepreneur and investor. He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and was its chief hardware designer. he's 68th w ...

David Cheriton David Ross Cheriton (born March 29, 1951) is a Canadian computer scientist, businessman, philanthropist, and venture capitalist. He is a computer science professor at Stanford University, where he founded and leads the Distributed Systems Group. ...

named Ullal CEO & President of

, 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 An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

on the

New York Stock Exchange The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...

under the symbol ANET. Jayshree was named one of Barron's “World's Best CEOs” in 2018 and one of Fortune's “Top 20 Business persons” in 2019.

Board of directors

* May 2008 – 2010;

Zscaler Zscaler, Inc. () is an American cloud security company based in San Jose, California. The company offers cloud-based services to protect enterprise networks and data. History Zscaler was founded in 2007 by Jay Chaudhry and K. Kailash. The com ...

* Oct 2008–Present;

* June 2020 – Present;

Snowflake Inc. Snowflake Inc. is an American cloud-based data storage company. Headquartered in Bozeman, Montana, it operates a platform that allows for data analysis and simultaneous access of data sets with minimal latency. It operates on Amazon Web Ser ...

Awards and honors

* Nominated as one of the 20 powerful Women to Watch in 2001 by

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev P ...

* 2001 Innovator and Influencer Award by

Information Week ''InformationWeek'' is a digital magazine which conducts corresponding face-to-face events, virtual events, and research. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United State ...

* 2005 One of the 50 Most Powerful People in Networking by

Network World International Data Group (IDG, Inc.) is an American market intelligence and demand generation company focused on the technology industry. IDG, Inc.'s mission is centered around supporting the technology industry through research, data, market ...

* One of the Top Women in Storage in 2007 * A Women of Influence award for Security CSOs in 2008 * A Top Ten Executive in VMWorld 2011 * One of the seven prominent Indian-origin women in the IT industry, according to ''

The Economic Times ''The Economic Times'' is an Indian English-language business-focused daily newspaper. Owned by The Times Group, ''The Economic Times'' began publication in 1961 and it is sold in all major cities in India. As of 2012, it is the world's secon ...

'' * 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 * Ranked #3 in Top 25 Disrupters of 2015 list by CRN * Ranked #9 in the 30 Most Impressive Female Engineers Alive Today list by Best Computer Science Degrees * 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. * 18 on Fortune's Businessperson of the Year for 2019 list. * Honored with 8th annual Forbes’ America's Richest Self-Made Women in 2022. * Member of Silicon Valley Business Journal's first Power 100 list for 2023. * 2023 ET Global Indian award winner * 2024 Banyan Tree Award * 2025 Silicon Valley Power 100

Personal life

She is married to Vijay Ullal. They have two daughters and live in Saratoga, California. Vijay Ullal, now a venture capitalist and investor, was president and chief operating officer of

from September 2012, until November 2014. She is also the sister of the late Saratoga City Councilwoman Susie Nagpal, who has a surviving son and daughter. Forbes estimates that Jayshree owns about 5% of Arista's stock, some of which is earmarked for her two children, niece and nephew.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ullal, Jayshree 1961 births Living people American technology chief executives American women chief executives American women computer scientists American computer scientists San Francisco State University alumni Santa Clara University alumni People from Saratoga, California American billionaires Female billionaires 21st-century American women Indian emigrants to the United States Businesspeople from New Delhi American people of Indian descent