WLI’s Allyship Program

Partha Ranganathan

Google Fellow & VP

Google

Parthasarathy (Partha) Ranganathan is currently a VP, technical Fellow at Google where he is the area technical lead for hardware and datacenters, designing systems at scale. Prior to this, he was a HP Fellow and Chief Technologist at Hewlett Packard Labs where he led their research on systems and data centers. Partha has worked on several interdisciplinary systems projects with broad impact on both academia and industry, including widely used innovations in energy-aware user interfaces, heterogeneous multi-cores, power-efficient servers, accelerators, and disaggregated and data-centric data centers. He has published extensively (including being the co-author on the popular “Datacenter as a Computer” textbook), is a co-inventor on more than 100 patents, and has been recognized with numerous awards. He has been named a top-15 enterprise technology rock star by Business Insider, one of the top 35 young innovators in the world by MIT Tech Review, and is a recipient of the ACM SIGARCH Maurice Wilkes award, Rice University’s Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni award, and the IIT Madras distinguished alumni award. He is one of the few computer scientists to have his work recognized with an Emmy award. He is also a Fellow of the IEEE and ACM and has also served on the board of directors for OpenCompute.

Jim Nottingham

SVP & Division President of Advanced Compute Solutions

HP

Jim Nottingham is currently the SVP and Division President of HP’s Advanced Compute Solutions business within the Personal Systems organization. In this role, Jim leads the Workstations, Retail Solutions, and Data Science Global Business Units. Previously, Jim held several senior leadership roles across HP’s Print Business. As Managing Director for HP Printing Korea, he led integration activities associated with the acquisition of Samsung’s printing business in South Korea. Prior to this role, Jim served as worldwide VP & GM of the Value LaserJet Hardware Business. Jim joined HP’s Boise Printer Division in 1992 as an R&D engineer and architect. In 1997, he left HP to join In System Design Inc., serving in multiple capacities. He returned to HP in 2001 as an R&D Manager and completed his master’s degree in Technology Management. Jim also holds BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from Utah State University. He and his wife Sherry have three children and nine grandchildren.

Rajeev Pal

VP, Engineering

Qualcomm

An accomplished leader with over two decades of experience in Software Project and Global Team leadership. Proven track record of successful leadership in industry-leading products such as 5G Modem/chipset, 2 Gbps LTE/Snapdragon X24, 5G Multimode/NAS, Snapdragon 810, Snapdragon X5 LTE Modem, and BREW. Demonstrated ability to translate visions into missions, and deliverables and delighting the stakeholders with exceptional execution. Effective leader with the capacity to build, mentor, and manage high-performing global teams including onsite and offshore employees. Excellent technology background including experience in large-scale software development, integration, and process deployments including the market launch of multiple chipset and handset products. Extensive international experience includes managing various programs and directing multi-site operations. Proficiency in engineering as well as business management.

Luai Nassar

Director, Product Development Engineering

Nvidia

I am an ardent NVIDIAN who believes in the power of driving complex architecture, silicon process, and assembly process with Speed of Light execution to production while keeping quality in the forefront of my mind. My professional expertise and experience have been in building my team to lead Graphical Processing
Units (GPUs), High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), and Chip on Wafer on Substrate (COWOS) Product Development Engineers, which manages the product testing, characterization, specification, reliability, and yield.

On a personal front, I am a brother to 3 sisters, a husband to a woman in engineering, and a
proud father to a daughter. I believe in empowering women and helping them reach their true potential. As part of the NVIDIA-Women in Technology (WIT) program, I have very much enjoyed helping and seeing WIT grow and advance their careers to the next level. Mentoring WIT and young professionals are very rewarding and satisfying. I also love meeting people, learning new cultures, and traveling, and Jet Skiing at the Yucatan Peninsula, Red Sea, and local lakes. I have two children, Jacob, and Isabella whom I am very proud of.

Eric Starkloff

Former President & CEO

National Instruments

Eric Starkloff is the former President and CEO of National Instruments Corporation (NI).

As NI’s President and CEO, Eric Starkloff led NI through transformational growth, achieving $1.7B in annual revenue in 2022. During his tenure at NI, he led the marketing and rebranding of the company, spearheaded key technology developments – including leading NI’s successful move into modular instruments and data analytics – and completed approximately 20 acquisitions. In 2023, Starkloff led NI through the sale of NI to Emerson for an emprise value of $8.6B.

An avid technologist, Starkloff has been a thought leader on topics such as the Internet of Things, 5G communications, data analytics, and autonomous vehicles. He serves on the boards of the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science and Huston-Tillotson University and has previously served on advisory boards for the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech and the Wireless Networking and Communication Group at The University of Texas at Austin. He stays involved in the Austin community and was a founding board member of Urban Roots, an Austin-based sustainable agriculture program that transforms the lives of young people.

Starkloff holds a bachelor’s degree with high distinction in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia.

Belli Kuttanna

Co-Founder & CTO

Rivos

Belliappa (Belli) Kuttanna is a co-founder of Rivos Inc. an early-stage startup developing RISC-V based high performance systems targeting Enterprise Server infrastructure.

Prior to founding Rivos in May 2021, Belli was a Senior Fellow and the chief technology officer of Intel Capital at Intel Corporation for 3 years and the Chief Architect of the New Technology Group. He was responsible for overseeing technical evaluations of externally developed technologies and guiding investment and acquisition decisions. As a Senior Fellow Belli played a lead role in driving Intel corporate level strategy on CPU and artificial intelligence. He served on Intel’s corporate-level technical leadership pipeline development team for 5 years while mentoring several top technical leaders including women and other diverse individuals across the corporation.

Belli was the chief architect of the first and several subsequent generations of the Intel® Atom and Intel® Quark processor families until 2014. He was the chief architect for the system-on-chip (SoC) in Medfield, the first x86-based phone platform and key contributor to Intel’s Tablet efforts with the Clovertrail and Baytrail platforms. Additionally, he contributed to the development of multiple product lines, including Atom-based microservers, consumer devices, and Internet of Things products.

Since the start of his career in 1989, Belli also held positions in the areas of ASIC and processor design and architecture at Texas Instruments Inc., Motorola Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc., and Qualcomm Inc.

Belli holds 30 issued patents and was the recipient of an Intel Achievement Award in 2008.

Belli earned his bachelor’s degree in electronics and communication engineering from Karnataka Regional Engineering College in India and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University.

Ajit Manocha

President & CEO

SEMI

Ajit Manocha is the president and CEO of SEMI, the global industry association serving the semiconductor and electronics manufacturing and design supply chain. Throughout his career, Manocha has been a champion of industry collaboration as a critical means of advancing technology for societal and economic prosperity.

In his leadership role at SEMI, Manocha has broadened the association’s scope to fuel industry growth and foster collaboration on challenges such as geopolitical and sustainability concerns, the talent gap and supply chain disruptions. He has driven SEMI to evolve with the global microelectronics ecosystem as it rapidly expands to support smarter, connected applications based on artificial intelligence, machine learning and other disruptive technologies.

Manocha was formerly CEO at GlobalFoundries. Prior to this, he held the role of Executive VP of worldwide operations at Spansion and earlier served as Executive VP and chief manufacturing officer (chief operations officer) at Philips Semiconductors. He began his career at AT&T Bell Laboratories as a research scientist and was granted more than a dozen patents related to semiconductor manufacturing processes that served as the foundation for modern microelectronics manufacturing. He has served on the boards of SEMI, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) and Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA).

Manocha has overseen the formation of more than 20 joint ventures and M&As over his career. Out of these, some of the most noteworthy are the manufacturing JV between AT&T and Cirrus Logic, the foundry JV SSMC between Philips Semiconductors and TSMC, the back-end JV Suzhou ASEN Semiconductors between Philips Semiconductors and ASE, and the spinoff of Philips Semiconductors (now NXP Semiconductors) from Royal Philips Electronics.

Manocha served on President Obama’s committees for “Advanced Manufacturing Partnerships” and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology (PCAST).

Manocha holds the rare distinction of being inducted into two Hall of Fames. In 2021, VLSIresearch (now TechInsights) added Manocha to its Semiconductor Industry Hall of Fame for his leadership of SEMI efforts to address geopolitical trade tensions as well as for his initiative in navigating the many challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic impacting SEMI and the microelectronics industry. In 2020, Manocha was inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame, and VLSIresearch named him an “All Star of the Semiconductor Industry” for his visionary leadership in 2019 to restructure SEMI to represent the expanded electronics supply chain.

Nuno Ramalho

Executive Director of R&D

Synopsys

Nuno Ramalho is an Executive Director of R&D at Synopsys responsible for Worldwide CAD in Solutions Group and Site Leader for Synopsys in Lisbon. Prior to joining Synopsys in 2009, he was VP at Chipidea Microelectronica and Director of R&D. Before joining Chipidea, Nuno worked 13 years as a research engineer and design manager at Philips Research and Philips Semiconducteurs in The Netherlands, UK, France and at IMEC in Belgium, specializing in Analog and Mixed-Signal IC design for Audio, Video, Magnetic Recording and Optical Communications. Nuno received his BAI and MSc degrees in Microelectronics in 1988 from Trinity College, University of Dublin. He has put numerous ICs into production, co-authored 6 papers and holds 14 US and European patents. Inclusion & Diversity initiatives are part of his identity, born in the Azores but lived from an early age in 8 countries across 3 continents, has dual citizenship and speaks four languages.

Ian Clifford

Application Engineering Group Director Custom IC EMEA

Cadence Design Systems

Ian Clifford is a Group Technical Director for Cadence Design Systems based in Bracknell, UK. For 34 years, he has been central to Cadence EMEA’s success in analog and mixed signal Electronic Design Automation SW where we grew our share of this market segment from zero to > $150M annual revenue. Starting as an application engineer supporting all of Cadence’s SW, Ian was recognized as the top Europe AE after only 1 year. Focusing on analog IC design, he expanded his skills into people and technical account management, product marketing and educational services. Since 2008, he has led Cadence’s team of 80 Application Engineers supporting virtually all European companies involved in analog and mixed signal semiconductor design.

Ian has been a pioneer in both driving Cadence’s environmental agenda and championing the advancement of women.
Prior to Cadence, Ian worked for 6 years in the semiconductor industry including 3 years in Analog IC Design. He holds a MA degree in Physics from Oxford and a MEng in Microelectronics from Durham. He is a STEM ambassador with schools.

Vignesh Natarajan

Vice President

Capgemini Deutschland GmBH

With nearly two decades of experience in the Services industry, Vignesh is an experienced management executive who leads the Hi-tech segment in Germany for Capgemini, one of the world’s leading consulting, technology, and digital services provider. Vignesh is passionate about technology and digitalization, and how they can transform the human experience and enrich lives. With his strong communication and interpersonal skills, he inspires global teams through his thought leadership, a consultative approach, strong business acumen and market understanding.

Being a strong believer and enabler of diversity and inclusion, Vignesh has been instrumental in implementing key measures within his responsible areas to have a strong gender diversity right from the selection process of the candidate to induction to the team to recognition of performance. He has also instilled a culture of openness in communication and sharing of opinions to enable an inclusive atmosphere where everyone feels safe and heard.

John Hassett

SVP, Chief Transformation Officer

Analog Devices

John Hassett is Senior Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer. In this role, he leads our strategic and operational efforts to integrate the recent $21B acquisition of Maxim Integrated. John brings extensive experience as a business leader having run ADI’s largest revenue generating group in addition to leveraging his operational expertise and various global engineering management roles with ADI.
Prior to his current role, he led our strategic and operational efforts in M&A transactions as Senior Vice President, Corporate Integration Management with responsibility for developing strategies that drive the integration of multi-billion-dollar transactions from due diligence to fully integrated entities.

During John’s career with ADI, he has also held a variety of senior leadership positions and has been a key participant in the transformational changes ADI has delivered in the semiconductor sector. He has served as Senior Vice President, Industrial and Consumer Business, a $3B business, representing more than 50% of ADI’s revenue at the time. John established and led growth initiatives which leverage ADI’s extensive franchise capability in measurement, sensing and testing. He was responsible for ensuring the business strategy focused on delivering the most impactful solutions to our customer’s most challenging problems.

John also served as Senior Vice President of Global Operations & Technology. This 8500-employee team had a global footprint with manufacturing locations in the USA, Ireland, Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. During John’s tenure in this role, he was instrumental in setting and executing ADI’s global manufacturing strategy, capacity management, quality & reliability strategy, and enterprise capex management. He also led the development of a world-class, digitized, and scalable supply chain focused on delivering industry leading operational performance from product delivery to quality and reliability performance for our customers.

During his tenure as Vice President of Manufacturing for Assembly & Test Operations, he established ADI’s now highly scalable backend manufacturing operations, expanding our Philippines campus and operations, set up a Southeast Asia Operations Center in Singapore and expanded our supply chain partnerships. Additionally, he established Engineering centers in Singapore and Philippines to support product Design and Development.

Mr. Hassett is also a member of the Board of Directors of UFP Technologies, an innovative designer and custom manufacturer of components, subassemblies, products, and packaging, primarily for the medical market. In this role he serves on the compensation committee and nominating committee.

Mr. Hassett joined Analog Devices in 1982 after graduating from the University of Limerick where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in manufacturing engineering. Mr. Hassett also holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of Limerick.

Michael Woittennek

CEO X-FAB Dresden

X-FAB

Michael started his career in the semiconductor industry in 2005 as a Process Engineer Plasma Etch at X-FAB Dresden. He also worked as a Process Engineer CVD and Coordinator Process Engineering. In 2017 he started his first direct leadership role as Module Manager Lithography. He has taken on other managerial roles with particular speed, and became Process Engineer Manager in 2020, Operations Manager in 2021, and has been CEO of X-FAB Dresden since 2023. He is a father of four in a patchwork family of six children. Michael has been inspired by several women and their leadership style throughout his career development, such as Gabriele Danzebrink, Kathrin Boden, Bettina Wachter, and his wife amongst others.

Dr. Matthew Morrison

Associate Professor Department of Computer Science & Engineering

University of Notre Dame

Matthew Morrison is an associate teaching professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. He received a B.S. degree in computer engineering (2010), an M.S. degree in computer engineering (Thesis, 2012), and a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering (Dissertation, 2014), all from the University of South Florida. Prior to his academic career, he served as a nuclear electronics technician in the United States Navy from 1999-2005.

Dr. Morrison has held faculty positions at Notre Dame (2019-present) and the University of Mississippi (2014-2018). At USF, he received the Provost’s Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Graduate Teaching Assistant in 2012, the Spirit of Innovation Research Award in 2013, and the Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2014. At the University of Mississippi, he received the School of Engineering’s Junior Faculty Research Award in 2017 and the Outstanding Teaching Award in 2018. At Notre Dame, he received the 2023 Computer Science and Engineering Outstanding Teaching Award, and was named a Fellow of the Institute of Education Initiatives. He has received Best Paper Awards at IEEE ISVLSI, IEEE ISEC, and Cadence CDNLive. He is also the recipient of the 2018 National Academic Advising Network’s (NACADA) Global Outstanding Advising Award for Faculty. He currently serves on the Organizing Committee for the Design Automation Conference Summer School, the Governing Council for the American Semiconductor Academy, and was the recipient of the Google Visiting Faculty Research Award in 2023. He served as a Visiting Professor at Howard University in the summer of 2023 in collaboration with Apple’s Racial Equity and Justice Initiative. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and the ACM.

Tait Sorensen

Head of the Americas Public Affairs

STMicroelectronics

Tait Sorensen is the leader of a new organization within STMicroelectronics (ST). He champions policies that align with ST’s strategic objectives through active engagement with industry stakeholders and policymakers.

After a long tenure leading ST’s global Investor Relations team, in July 2023, Tait assumed the role of Head of the Americas Public Affairs reporting to ST’s President, Legal Counsel and Public Affairs. He maintains offices in both Scottsdale, Arizona and Coppell, Texas, and is the primary interface for ST’s membership in industry associations in the Americas including the U.S. Semiconductor Industry Association and the Global Semiconductor Alliance. His focus is to drive innovation, shape regulatory environments, and support growth opportunities by showcasing ST’s manufacturing capabilities and cutting-edge technologies. Additionally, he elevates awareness of ST’s crucial role in the semiconductor industry across the Americas.

Prior to joining ST in May 2000, Tait was a Vice President with Christensen & Associates, a leading investor relations firm based in Scottsdale, Arizona. His career also includes three years of mortgage banking experience in San Diego, California.

A third-generation Arizonan, he earned his Bachelor of Science from the University of Arizona. He later graduated from Arizona State University with a Master of Business Administration. Tait is married to Ann Sorensen and has two adult sons, Thomas and Jack, and a Whoodle dog, Chewie.

Ashu J. Bakhle

Independent Advisor & Consultant

Ashutosh (Ashu) J. Bakhle is currently an independent advisor and consultant. Ashu recently retired from Intel. In his most recent role at Intel, he served as Vice President in the Network and Edge Group (NEX) and General Manager of Xeon and Networking Engineering (NXNE) Edge Portfolio Engineering (EPE). In this role, he oversaw engineering for the group’s full product portfolio, which includes the Intel® Xeon® processor, Intel® Core™ processor, Intel Atom® processor families, and edge inference accelerators.

Since joining Intel as a design engineer in 1991, Bakhle held various leadership positions in the company’s CPU, imaging, and microcontroller engineering organizations. Before his role in the Edge organization, he was Senior Director of Engineering in Intel’s Platform Engineering Group, where he led engineering teams responsible for developing multiple system-on-chip (SoC) products. These included SoCs for traditional markets such as essential PCs and tablets, as well as SoCs for growth segments like gateways and IoT. Over the past two decades, Bakhle has led cross-disciplinary engineering teams that developed SoCs for several consumer electronic segments, including cable and internet protocol set-top boxes, TVs, and media players.

Bakhle earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Bombay in India, a master’s degree in computer engineering from the University of Colorado, an MBA from Arizona State University, a Global Leadership certificate from Thunderbird School of Global Management, and a certificate in Corporate Boards from Harvard University. He also holds several patents in security and digital imaging.

Bakhle sits on the board of the Si Se Puede Foundation, an award-winning organization furthering STEM and robotics education, and is a startup advisor. He has been an inclusion ally throughout his career and has been recognized through cross company awards for this.

Greg Smith

President and CEO

Teradyne

Greg Smith is the President and CEO of Teradyne. In February 2023, he became Teradyne’s CEO and joined the board of directors. Since 2020, Greg has been the President of Teradyne’s Industrial Automation Group (now Robotics), growing the revenue 44%. Greg joined Teradyne’s Semiconductor Test Division in 2006 as the Marketing Manager for digital test and held a number of roles, ultimately leading the group as Division President from 2017 to 2020, when revenue grew over 50%. Prior to Teradyne, Greg held engineering, marketing and leadership positions in groups developing test equipment at Raytheon and LTX. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

Craig Ochikubo

Business Development / Advisory Board Member

Movandi / Claros

Charlie Kawwas. Ph.D.

President, Semiconductor Solutions Group

Broadcom

Charlie Kawwas is President of the Semiconductor Solutions Group at Broadcom, responsible for the company’s 15 Semiconductor Divisions and the Brocade Storage Networking Division. In addition, Dr. Kawwas leads Global Operations and Intellectual Property for all Broadcom. Prior to this role, Dr. Kawwas served as Chief Operating Officer from December 2020 during which he drove the Global Operations, Sales and Corporate Marketing. He was also the Senior Vice President and Chief Sales Officer at Broadcom from May 2014. During his tenure at Broadcom, Dr. Kawwas oversaw the strategic growth of the hardware businesses from $4B to $30B+, driving strategic technology investments and operational excellence.

Dr. Kawwas joined the company through the LSI acquisition where he was head of Worldwide Sales. Previous positions at LSI include Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the networking division and Vice President of Marketing for the networking and storage products group. Before joining LSI, Dr. Kawwas held several senior management and engineering positions at Nortel.

Dr. Kawwas received a B.Eng. with Great Distinction in Computer Engineering as the highest graduating engineering student, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. Dr. Kawwas was awarded Alumnus of the Year for 2020 by Concordia University.