Jayshree Ullal
British-American chief executive (born 1961)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jayshree V. Ullal (born March 27, 1961) is a British-American billionaire businesswoman, chairperson and CEO of Arista Networks, a cloud networking company responsible for the deployment of Gigabit Ethernet in AI and data centers.
San Francisco State University (M.S.)
Jayshree V. Ullal | |
|---|---|
Ullal in 2014 | |
| Born | March 27, 1961 |
| Alma mater | Santa Clara University (B.S.) San Francisco State University (M.S.) |
| Occupations | CEO and Chairperson, Arista Networks |
| Spouse | Vijay Ullal |
| Children | 2 daughters |
| Website | arista.com |
Early life and education
Ullal was born on March 27, 1961, in London into a family of Indian origin.[1] Her father was a physicist who worked for India's Ministry of Education.[2] She grew up in New Delhi, India,[1] and was schooled at Convent of Jesus and Mary, Delhi.[3]
She attended San Francisco State University,[4] where she graduated with a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1981.[5] She went on to Santa Clara University where she received an M.S. in Engineering Management and Leadership in 1986.[6]
Career
Early career
Ullal began her career as a senior strategic development engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor and later joined Advanced Micro Devices (AMD),[7] where she designed high-speed memory chips for IBM and Hitachi.[8] In 1988 she joined Ungermann-Bass,[8] where she was director of the company's internetworking business unit.[9]
In March 1992, Ullal joined Crescendo Communications, a maker of Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) network products, as vice-president of marketing.[9] She helped pioneer 100-Mbit/s Copper Distributed Data Interface (CDDI) products[10] and worked on first-generation Ethernet switching.[11]
Cisco
In September 1993, Cisco Systems acquired Crescendo Communications, marking Cisco's first acquisition and first foray into the switching market.[12] 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.[13] As vice president and general manager of LAN switching in the Enterprise group,[citation needed] Ullal initiated strategic initiatives such as unified communications, IP telephony, content networking and policy networking.[13] She oversaw some 20 mergers and acquisitions for Cisco in the enterprise sector.[14]
By 2005 she became Senior Vice President of the Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group.[15] 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.[16] Ullal's career at Cisco spanned more than 15 years.
Arista
In October 2008, co-founders Andy Bechtolsheim and David Cheriton named Ullal CEO & President of Arista Networks, a cloud networking company located in Santa Clara, CA.[17]
Ullal has worked on the deployment of 10/25/40/50/100/400/800/1.6T Gigabit Ethernet technology.
Ullal was named by Forbes as "one of the top five most influential people in the networking industry today" for her work at Arista.[18]
In June 2014, Ullal led Arista to an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ANET.[19]
Ullal was named one of Barron's “World's Best CEOs” in 2018.[20] She was named one of Fortune's “Top 20 Business persons” in 2019.[21]
Ullal was named on the Fortune Most Powerful Women 2026 list.[22]
Personal life
She is married to Vijay Ullal. They have two daughters and live in Saratoga, California.[23][1] Vijay Ullal, now a venture capitalist and investor, was president and chief operating officer of Fairchild Semiconductor from September 2012,[1][24] until November 2014.[25] She is also the sister of the late Saratoga City councilwoman Susie Nagpal, who has a surviving son and daughter.[26][27] Forbes estimates that Ullal owns about 5% of Arista's stock, some of which is earmarked for her two children, niece and nephew.[28]