Dressed in killer heels and a sharp suit, she is eloquent, confident and at the top of her profession. As the chief technology officer for networking giant Cisco, she commands a position in the industry more usually held by a man. Her gender is a matter of fact much like her geekiness. Nothing else.

A pink mug inscribed: “Women make the best businessmen” sums up the dichotomy of her situation. “Someone gave it to me who thought this was something I should have because it spoke a lot of who I am. I am a woman and I am a business person.”

She makes no excuses for either. And as a woman with influence, she said she is prepared to use it if it encourages other females to enter a world she loves. Padmasree’s climb to the top has been a slow and steady one. “I came to the US with $100 and a one-way ticket. I was coming to do my PhD at Cornell. I never finished it because I got a job and started working and decided to stay in the US because I felt the US was really a platform to have access to multiple global opportunities.”

Most of her working life has been spent at Motorola. Less than a year ago the diminutive Padmasree moved to Silicon Valley and Cisco, a company synonymous with network hardware and the internet. Unsexy as it sounds, she is trying to shift that focus to what she calls precursors. “If you look at trends that means someone else is already doing that. We need to be a trend setter not a follower in the industry.”

She illustrated her approach with a couple of examples. “One of the things we are looking at as a precursor is what happens when you combine some aspects of social networking with video. It leads to a more collaborative way of doing things and we are just beginning to see that.”

This has led Cisco to work on unified communications that combine a virtual meeting place via TV, web conferencing and instant messaging. This unified communications sector is said to be worth $34bn and a key strategy for Cisco’s future.

Her mother worried about her decision at the age of 17 to attend the highly regarded Indian Institute of Technology far from home in New Delhi. “There were only five women students in a class of 300 or so. It was a rare sight if you saw a female student. I think that was a little bit hard for my mom to accept. Not necessarily because I was pursuing engineering but she felt I was going into a very hostile environment where there were not very many female students.”

But she went armed with some sage advice from her father, “He always used to say ‘Have your eyes in the sky and your feet on the ground.’ Basically, have really high goals but always know who you are and be realistic about the world around you.”

Padmasree’s lifelong passion for technology has led to a conviction that it is capable of changing the world.

The New York Times