Board Members
G. Satish
President
CEO and Co-founder of Connixt, an enterprise cloud-mobile vertical SaaS business that delivers digital transformation for the last mile. His professional career has been in complex, enterprise, supply chain, mobile, and big data/analytics solutions for large corporations. His personal belief is that the key to business growth is amazingly customer-focused teams that share the passion for delivering customer delight.
Piyush Malik
Director | President - Silicon Valley
Piyush is a startup executive, entrepreneur, board advisor and business transformation practitioner in the domain of emerging technologies. He has been the founding President of ASEI Silicon Valley chapter since 2015 and National Chairman since 2021. Professionally, he is a technology and business thought leader currently serving as Chief Digital Officer & CTO at a Private Equity backed Cloud and Digital Innovation services startup Veridic Solutions. Prior to that he was the SVP at a silicon valley based Google ecosystem startup SpringML. He specializes in digital transformation and drives thought leadership and devises strategies and solutions for applying data science, AI/ML, Cloud, IoT and advanced analytics to improve business outcomes. Previously, Piyush led IBM’s Worldwide Big Data & Analytics Center of Excellence for the Digital consulting business focusing on data- driven business transformation.He also built the Global Information Integrity practice for PwC and has served Fortune 500 clients in 4 continents over the past 3 decades as a management and technology executive. He earned an engineering degree in electronics and communications from Delhi University and a masters in management of technology from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He has been active in industry consortia as well as non-profits for over 25 years.
Vatsala Upadhyay
Vice President
Vatsala is the IT Systems Architect at Seco Tools. She has over 28 years of experience in collaboration solutions and CRM applications across multi-platforms. Masters in Computer Applications from BIT, Mesra with Executive MBA degree, she has professional certifications in Project Management, ITIL and Six Sigma as well. She has also been a national level volleyball player and is a techno-geek, who believes that there is a solution for every problem, just that we need to look deep enough.
Jwalant Lakhia
Director
Jwalant currently works for Sirius XM Radio as Director, OEM Applications Engineering. Jwalant has over twenty-four years of experience in design, development, and launch of electronics products for automotive, consumer, marine and aviation industries. Jwalant received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (BSEE) from the University of Illinois & Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MSEE) and Business Administration (MBA) from University of Michigan, Dearborn. Jwalant has served in many nonprofit community organizations as a volunteer and as a board member.
Muthu Sivanantham
Treasurer
Muthu is responsible in defining and developing Industry Solution Experiences for the Energy & Materials Customers at Dassault Systemes the 3DEXPERIENCE Company. Dassault’s world-leading solutions transform the way products are designed, produced, and supported, bridging the virtual and real universes. He has over 25 years of Industry experience ranging from Product Management, R&D, Market Intelligence to Consulting. Muthu has been a trusted advisor to the customers and organizations he served with a strong acumen in Digital Manufacturing and Product Lifecycle Management. He is passionate about renewable energy’s significance in combating climate change. Muthu is an Electrical Engineer from NIT Allahabad India, with a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from Oakland University. He also has a Master’s Certificate in Business Leadership and Management from MSU’s Eli Broad School of Management.
Dr. Thomas Abraham
Director
Dr. Abraham is the Founder President of many Indian community institutions such as Federation of Indian Associations of New York, NFIA, GOPIO, he is also a technologist, specialized in advanced materials and nanotechnology. Currently, Dr. Abraham is president of Innovative Research and Products, Inc., and industry and market analysis company based in Stamford, CT. After finishing a Ph.D. from Columbia University, Dr. Abraham worked at University of Denver, Brookhaven National Laboratory before joining Business Communications Company where he served as its Vice President.
Divya Ashok
Secretary
Divya Ashok is a leader with 13 years of experience building and scaling global initiatives from the ground up. As Vice President of Strategy and Innovation, Divya will lead the strategy around Salesforce’s India business and champion initiatives around India in San Francisco. Prior to her new role, Divya was in Product Management. Her teams led Salesforce’s efforts around scale, where she championed and delivered over 500+ unique product enhancements. She led product readiness for 50+ of Salesforce’s largest and most complex customers globally. Divya’s passion for the empowerment of women and children led her to co-create the Salesforce Women's Network. While she was Global President, membership increased by 350% to over 9,000 allies and expanded to 48 chapters globally. As for her accomplishments, Divya has been selected to join Fortune's Most Powerful Women Next Gen global community 3 times to exchange ideas and perspectives with a select group of trailblazing women from across the world. She is a life member of the American Society of Engineers of Indian Origin in Silicon Valley and also serves on the nonprofit's board
Shreekant Agrawal
Director
An aerospace professional with over 32 years of diverse experience, including 1 year at Northrop Grumman and 29 years at Boeing in engineering, R&D, program management, and functional management. Contributions to the development of military aircraft (T-X, F/A-18E/F, T-45, Tanker), hypersonic missiles, and space launch vehicles, commercial transport (HSCT, OAW, BWB), and military satellites. 2-year rotational assignment in the Boeing Executive Development Program (EDP)
Surbhi Kaul
Director
Surbhi Kaul is a business leader with immense strategy experience in both B2B and B2C companies. She has built & led product and engineering teams at technology icons like Google, YouTube, Netflix, Cisco to name a few. She has launched many successful and Insightful products over the last decade many of which encompass AI and machine learning expertise. She led query disambiguation and speech recognition efforts on leading edge Google Home and Google Assistant enabled devices using Google Cloud ML models. In her current role, Surbhi leads Juniper’s Enterprise DataCenter business as Head of Product for Network Virtualization and SDN Software products. She leads a large team of Product Line Managers, Technical Marketing Engineers and Solution Architects and manages complex cross-organizational initiatives. Using her motivational and EQ-based leadership style, she sets a clear vision for product development of cloud-native products to enable digital transformation of both services & enterprise businesses. Surbhi holds a Bachelor's in Engineering from IIT Kanpur and Master's degree in Computer Science from Texas A&M University. She is currently pursuing a General Management degree at Harvard Business School. She is very passionate about supporting the IIT community and is one of the key leaders of the IIT Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning forum, a Board Member for IIT Bay Area organization, and the former President of IIT-Kanpur West Coast alumni association. She has also Chaired and led the "Women in Product" San Francisco Bay Area organization.
Rakesh Patel
Director
Rakesh is working at General Motors in SAP IT Compliance area. Having Engineering Degree and Master in Management Technology, Rakesh has worked at automotive industries & IT consulting companies. Also, Rakesh has served executive and board member positions at various non-profit organizations. Rakesh is interested in serving on the ASEI board because of the positive engineering and technology impact ASEI can have on its members.
Sanjay B Dalal
Director
Sanjay B Dalal is founder & CEO of oGoing.com. A community volunteer, digital marketer, author, speaker and serial entrepreneur, Sanjay loves small business, family, friends, humor, marketing, innovation, mentoring and networking, not to mention nature hikes in sunny California.
Geetha Ravishankar
Director
Chief Technology Officer at Cougaar Software, Inc. An inspirational leader, passionate technologist, and agile coach with 25+ years of experience building, coaching teams, and delivering software products and applications, working with business, technical, and end user organizations at Cisco, Oracle, VMware, Intuit, and multiple start-ups.
Ashwini Balasubramanian
Director
As the General Manager of Advanced Engineering at Harley-Davidson Motor Company, I lead all aspects of innovation and technology development for the motorcycle portfolio, including test and reliability engineering, core engineering, and product sustainability strategy. Over 20 years of professional experience in, with a strong background in product development, testing and validation, NVH, and product portfolio planning, and corporate strategy.
Raj Yavatkar
Director
Raj Yavatkar is the Chief Technology Officer of Juniper Networks. In this role, Raj is responsible for charting Juniper's technology strategy and for leading and executing the company’s critical technology innovations and products in intelligent self-driving network, security, Mobile Edge Cloud, network virtualization, packet-optical integration and hybrid cloud.
Rakesh Guliani
Director
As the Head of Talent Acquisition at Park Computer Systems, a leading IT consulting and staffing firm, I have over 20 years of experience in human resources and talent acquisition. I am responsible for building the people and talent function from scratch and mentoring a large team of technology consultants, recruiters, and account managers in the US and India.
Venkat Gurunathan
President - Washington DC
Venkat is a Cybersecurity and Privacy Consultant with PwC serving fortune 500 companies in the Banking, Health Care, and Technology sectors. He is a graduate from the University of Maryland, College Park with a Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering, focusing on Cybersecurity. Venkat had previously served as the President of the ASEI University of Maryland chapter. He loves to golf in the summers and ski in the winters.
Puneet Dixit
President - Dallas
Puneet is a Senior Digital Leader with more than 25 years of experience. He is currently working as a Senior Director with HCL America managing a large account. His prior experience includes working with large SI companies, such as EDS Corp and Perot Systems, and managing customers such as NASA Ames Research Center. Outside of his work, he enjoys traveling, trekking, and spending time with his family.
Lalita Kambhampati
President - Michigan
An Engineering graduate from IIT Delhi with Executive MBA degree & professional certifications in Project Mgmt, ITIL & Sig Sigma, Lalita Kambhampati has more than 28 years experience in IT and Project Mgmt. She has extensive technical & functional experience in Peoplesoft applications and mainframe legacy systems . She has great passion for technology & would love to use technology in a positive way for the betterment of mankind.
Vrunda Patel
President - Sothern California
Vrunda Patel is a Chemical Engineer who recently started her career as a Sales Engineer for Emerson Electric. She holds an Engineering-in-Training certificate and was actively involved in the UCI chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, where she held the position of Communications Chair for their annual Western Regional Conference. Vrunda enjoys her position as a Sales Engineer for the Fluid and Motion Control division.