Jayshree V. Ullal | |
|---|---|
 Ullal in 2015 | |
| Born | March 27, 1961 London, England |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Santa Clara University San Francisco State University |
| Occupation(s) | CEO and president, Arista Networks |
| Spouse | Vijay Ullal |
| Children | 2 daughters |
| Website | arista.com |
Jayshree V. Ullal (born March 27, 1961) is a British-American billionaire businesswoman, president and CEO of Arista Networks, a cloud networking company responsible for the deployment of 10/25/40/50/100 Gigabit Ethernet networking in the data center.
Ullal was born on March 27, 1961, in London into a Hindu family of Indian origin.[1] She grew up in New Delhi, India,[1] and was schooled at Convent of Jesus and Mary, Delhi.[2]
She attended San Francisco State University,[3] where she graduated with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 1981.[4] She went on to Santa Clara University where she received an M.S. in Engineering Management and Leadership in 1986.[5]
Ullal began her career as a senior strategic development engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor and later joined Advanced Micro Devices (AMD),[6] where she designed high-speed memory chips for IBM and Hitachi.[7] In 1988 she joined Ungermann-Bass,[7] where she was director of the company's internetworking business unit.[8]
In March 1992, Ullal joined Crescendo Communications, a maker of Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) network products, as vice-president of marketing.[8] She helped pioneer 100-Mbit/s Copper Distributed Data Interface (CDDI) products[9] and worked on first-generation Ethernet switching.[10]
In September 1993, Cisco Systems acquired Crescendo Communications, marking Cisco's first acquisition and first foray into the switching market.[11] 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.[12] 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.[12] She oversaw some 20 mergers and acquisitions for Cisco in the enterprise sector.[citation needed]
By 2005 she became Senior Vice President of the Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group.[13] 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.[14] Ullal's career at Cisco spanned more than 15 years.
In October 2008, co-founders Andy Bechtolsheim & David Cheriton named Ullal CEO & President of Arista Networks, a cloud networking company located in Santa Clara, CA.[15]
Ullal was named by Forbes magazine as "one of the top five most influential people in the networking industry today" for her work at Arista Networks.[16]
In June 2014, Ullal led Arista Networks to an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ANET.[17]
Jayshree was named one of Barron's “World's Best CEOs” in 2018 [18] and one of Fortune's “Top 20 Business persons” in 2019.[19]
She is married to Vijay Ullal. They have two daughters and live in Saratoga, California.[39][1] Vijay Ullal, now a venture capitalist and investor, was president and chief operating officer of Fairchild Semiconductor from September 2012,[1][40] until November 2014.[41] She is also the sister of the late Saratoga City Councilwoman Susie Nagpal, who has a surviving son and daughter.[42][43] Forbes estimates that Jayshree owns about 5% of Arista's stock, some of which is earmarked for her two children, niece and nephew.[44]