The Dr. Lisa Su Woman of Innovation Award recognizes female individuals, such as its namesake, Dr. Lisa Su, for their exceptional dedication and exceptional contributions to the development, innovation, growth and long-term opportunities for the semiconductor industry.
Microsoft
Rani Borkar is the Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Azure Hardware Systems and Infrastructure. In her role, Borkar leads the core organizations responsible for planning, architecting, developing, and deploying hardware and infrastructure for Microsoft’s leading cloud computing platform—from silicon, to systems, to supply chain.
Over the last 35 years, Borkar has established herself as a pioneer in the semiconductor industry, a technology executive, product visionary, and trusted leader. Borkar’s leadership has intersected the most seminal platform shifts in the evolution of modern computing: the rise of the PC, the introduction of consumer mobile, the arrival of multi-core processors, and the proliferation of digital transformation via cloud, AI, and quantum computing.
During her 27-year career at Intel, Borkar led silicon product development strategy for microprocessors that drove evolutionary shifts for the semiconductor industry, including the highly successful Intel Xeon, Atom, Core, Pentium, and Celeron product families. Managing large, complex, and diverse global engineering organizations, Borkar’s leadership enabled technological innovation in servers, PCs, mobile phones, tablets, and the Internet of Things that drove major product shifts and transformed consumer behavior.
Since joining Microsoft, Borkar has been instrumental in strengthening Azure’s place as one of the industry-leading enterprise cloud computing platforms. Currently, Azure is the global leader in enterprise cloud computing, as it serves more than 95% of the Fortune 500. As the head of Azure Hardware Systems and Infrastructure, Borkar is responsible for the vision, strategy, and architecture of silicon and systems development, cloud supply chain as well as global capacity deployment for Microsoft’s cloud data center infrastructure. Under her leadership, Microsoft’s brightest engineering minds focus on developing technologies that empower the world to innovate and drive end-to-end business value for Azure’s products and solutions.
Leading with the philosophy of “mission first, people always,” Borkar has inspired and transformed organizations by building close-knit communities. To produce great technology, Borkar believes in the power of combining technology assets and engineering talent with the values of collaboration, innovation, and risk-taking, thereby empowering teams to innovate and move the industry forward.
Borkar is actively involved in the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA), where she serves on its board of directors and on the GSA Women’s Leadership Council. She is also on the board of directors of Applied Materials. Borkar previously served as a Trustee and as Chair of the Board of Trustees at Oregon State University to help guide the state’s effort to advance economic development and innovation.
Borkar earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree—both in physics—from the University of Mumbai, India. She went on to earn a second master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Oregon Graduate Institute. Borkar also holds an Executive Program in Leadership (LEAD) certificate from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Dr. Lisa T. Su is chair and chief executive officer of AMD. Prior to serving as president and CEO, she was the chief operating officer responsible for integrating AMD’s business units, sales, global operations, and infrastructure enablement teams into a single market-facing organization responsible for all aspects of product strategy and execution. Dr. Su joined AMD in January 2012 as senior vice president and general manager, global business units and was responsible for driving end-to-end business execution of AMD products and solutions.
Prior to joining AMD, Dr. Su served as senior vice president and general manager, Networking and Multimedia at Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. (a semiconductor manufacturing company) and was responsible for global strategy, marketing and engineering for the company’s embedded communications and applications processor business. Dr. Su joined Freescale in 2007 as chief technology officer, where she led the company’s technology roadmap and research and development efforts.
Dr. Su spent the previous 13 years at IBM in various engineering and business leadership positions, including vice president of the Semiconductor Research and Development Center responsible for the strategic direction of IBM’s silicon technologies, joint development alliances and semiconductor R&D operations. Prior to IBM, she was a member of the technical staff at Texas Instruments Inc. in the Semiconductor Process and Device Center from 1994 to 1995.
Dr. Su has bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She has published more than 40 technical articles and was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers in 2009. In 2018, Dr. Su was elected to the National Academy of Engineering and received the Global Semiconductor Association’s Dr. Morris Chang Exemplary Leadership Award. In 2020, Fortune named Dr. Su #2 on its “Business Person of the Year” list, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Science, and received the Grace Hopper Technical Leadership Abie Award. In 2021, she was recognized by the IEEE with its highest semiconductor honor, the Robert N. Noyce Medal, and was appointed by President Biden to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. She has been a member of the board of directors of Cisco Systems, Inc., since January 2020 and also serves on the board of directors for the Semiconductor Industry Association.
