The Women’s Leadership Initiative (WLI)’s Allyship Program not only recognizes and celebrates men who champion the advancement of women, but it actively fosters a culture of inclusion and support within the semiconductor industry. Our purpose is to highlight individuals who actively support, mentor, and advocate for women in the workplace, fostering an environment where every voice is heard, and every talent is recognized. Through our Allyship Program, we strive to inspire collaboration, break down barriers, and pave the way for a more equitable and vibrant future in semiconductor technology.
Partha
Ranganathan
Google Fellow and VP
Google
Partha Ranganathan
Google Fellow and 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
Rajeev
Pal
VP, Engineering
Qualcomm
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
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 CEO
NI
Eric Starkloff
Former CEO
NI
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
Belli Kuttanna
Co-Founder and 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
CEO
SEMI
Ajit Manocha
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
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
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
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
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.