Jayshree V. Ullal, Indian-American CEO of Arista Networks, Recognized as Top Indian-Origin Woman on Forbes List of America’s Most Successful Self-Made Women
Jayshree V. Ullal, the President and CEO of Arista Networks, a leading cloud networking company based in Silicon Valley, has been featured on Forbes’ prestigious list of America’s 100 most successful and wealthiest self-made women. Ullal’s remarkable accomplishments have earned her the 15th spot on the list, making her the highest-ranking Indian-origin woman among business leaders.
Forbes reports that Arista Networks, under the leadership of Ullal as President and CEO since 2008, achieved an impressive revenue of approximately $4.4 billion in 2022. Ullal herself holds around 2.4% of Arista’s stocks, showcasing her substantial ownership in the publicly-traded company. Additionally, she serves as a board member of Snowflake, a prominent cloud-computing company that successfully went public in September 2020.
Ullal, recognized as one of Silicon Valley’s esteemed CEOs, has steered her company’s remarkable journey from its inception to becoming a multibillion-dollar enterprise, culminating in a historic and successful IPO in June 2014. Emphasizing her core values, she firmly believes in the “Arista Way,” which centers around prioritizing the well-being of employees, delivering exceptional customer experiences, and creating value for shareholders. Ullal’s steadfast commitment to these principles has been instrumental in guiding Arista Networks to its current success.
She firmly believes in her company’s strategic approach to hiring, prioritizing stability, and minimizing the need for mass layoffs. Recognized as one of the highly esteemed female technology CEOs in the United States, she expressed, “While we never say never, even during prosperous times, we exercised caution in our hiring practices to avoid excessive expansion. Culturally, we value stability and prefer to avoid a hire-and-fire mentality. Our goal is to maintain job security and mitigate the necessity for layoffs.” Although occasional restructuring occurred to address specific job requirements, Ullal emphasized the importance of recognizing and rewarding exceptional performers while effectively managing those who may require improvement.
In addition, she openly addresses the challenges posed by US immigration regulations, particularly affecting numerous Indian professionals.
“The immigration process presents significant challenges and requires reform. The prolonged approval time for permanent residence visas, which can extend up to 5, 10, or even 15 years, represents a substantial portion of a professional’s working life. I was fortunate to have mine approved within one year,” shared Ullal, who pursued a BS in electrical engineering at San Francisco State University after completing high school in Delhi.
While she acknowledges that many Indian immigrants, like herself, smoothly obtained the right to work in the United States and embraced the diverse cultural melting pot, she firmly believes that they also brought substantial value. Regrettably, the immigration process has experienced prolonged delays and further deterioration in the aftermath of the pandemic.
With numerous companies in America now having to downsize their workforce, many young professionals from India face uncertainty on multiple fronts.
She empathizes with families who had made the US their home-both Indians and others – and were affected by the lay-offs being thus forced to leave and go back to India or to other countries with easier immigration rules. She acknowledged, “When working in a foreign country, there are inherent risks and realities involved; not everything proceeds seamlessly.” But she also hoped that employers help employees, who were getting laid off, find jobs at other locations or other companies.
While employers may not have control over factors such as immigration status, they can offer support to individuals facing layoffs by assisting them in finding alternative employment opportunities.
The Indian-American CEO, renowned for her exceptional accomplishments, has been the recipient of multiple prestigious awards and recognitions. These include being named one of Barron’s World’s Best CEOs in 2018, ranking among Fortune’s Top 20 Business Persons in 2019, and being acknowledged as one of Forbes’ wealthiest self-made women in America in 2022. With a positive outlook, she expresses enthusiasm for the Indian and Indian American talent within Arista Networks.
“At the inception of Arista, out of the 30 engineers, only two were of Indian origin. However, through the establishment of our India development center 12 years ago and the subsequent acquisition of Mojo Networks in Pune, India, it has become our largest international site,” she revealed. Furthermore, she highlighted the unsurprising fact that India, with its substantial population of educated and technologically skilled individuals, significantly contributes to the deep pool of engineering talent in Silicon Valley.
Ullal expressed, “While many companies limit talent development in India to certain functions, we view India as an equal participant with equal opportunities. At Arista, we believe that exceptional developers can emerge from any part of the world, and engineering talent is globally distributed, whether in virtual or physical form. We have embraced this philosophy even prior to the pandemic, and it remains an integral part of our values.”
Being a thought and business leader, she has observed the significant progression of artificial intelligence, widely regarded as the next major breakthrough in technology. She highlighted how AI has transitioned from labs and scientific computing backrooms to practical implementation in the real world. Ullal emphasized Arista’s commitment to enhancing its network to be highly relevant to AI, ensuring superior quality and seamless performance for data-intensive and compute-intensive applications.
