84 – Optimize for Success 2021 – A Focus on a Purpose-driven and Inclusive Mindset

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As we kick off the podcast’s fourth anniversary and leap into 2021, I am excited to be joined by an “Industry Thought Leader”, a friend and a woman I admire, Chaitra Vedullapalli, the co-founder and CMO of Meylah Corporation, a purpose-driven organization.

Chaitra is recognized as an Influential Business Leader with a passion to enable digital equity and access to achieve economic prosperity in our communities.

As the co-founder and CMO of Meylah Corporation, Chaitra is focused on helping customers to modernize their business with cloud solutions. She is also the Co-Founder & President of Women in Cloud, where she drives global conversations with the United Nations and top corporations like Microsoft, IBM, and Accenture.

In this episode, Chaitra and I discuss:

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As with each of my episodes, I appreciate your support. Please tell your friends about Ultimate Guide to Partnering™ and where they can find us.

This episode of the podcast is sponsored by Ultimate Partnerships. Ultimate Partnerships helps you get the most results from your partnerships. Get Partnerships Right – Optimize for Success – Deliver Results – Ultimate Partnerships.

Transcription By Otter.AI – Please Pardon Typos Below

Vince Menzione  0:30 

Chitra, welcome to the podcast.

Chaitra Vedullapalli  2:22 

Thank you, I’m really excited to be here and Happy New Year to you and to all your listeners,

Vince Menzione  2:29 

Happy 2021 I am so excited to be able to say for the first time, Happy 2021. And so excited to welcome you to the Ultimate Guide to partnering. Our paths have crossed for many years now you have had an amazing career, we both worked at Microsoft for a period of time. And you’ve been a force for good in places that we both really care about, including the women in the cloud movement, our partner ecosystem. And so I’m really looking forward to this conversation today.

Chaitra Vedullapalli  2:56 

Thank you, Vince, thank you

Vince Menzione  2:58 

Chitra, your bio is really impressive. You have had an amazing career both in large tech giants like Microsoft and Oracle. And as an entrepreneur, and you hold several positions in board roles. I was noticing your LinkedIn profile. I’m wondering where you find the energy? In fact, can you describe yourself to our listeners?

Chaitra Vedullapalli  3:19 

Because I wish I could see it in like a single line. But let me take a stab at it, I would say is the journey to Tech has been, I would say an accidental and also and I would say an opportunity. And it started with me saying no, I don’t want to do technology because I wanted to be in music. But after getting married to engineer and moving here, decided like, you know, I couldn’t fit into the music industry because I couldn’t see myself there. Because the representation did not make it feasible to go however, I decided to go into the tech. So as a tech journey, I got into the Oracle consulting as my first role and then investing a lot with meeting with customers and doing a lot of consulting work and pricing and licensing stuff. And that helped me grow into the career very smoothly where I got to spend more time with the leadership team at Oracle, I would say the executive leadership and that’s when I kind of saw what the potential of technology looks like. So spend more time in corporate America between Oracle and Microsoft, I would say closer to like 16 to 18 years, had a fantastic ride and then decided to take a break because I really wanted to think about what my career would look like or what my impact on the society would look like. So I took the role to basically become an entrepreneur really restart everything from scratch and becoming an entrepreneur wanted to build an enterprise ready solution and going to market for driving economic development because that was our ultimate passion. Because when you Economic Development creates jobs for people. And from that, realize that there is a whole diversity and inclusion work that needs to be done for women, because the access for opportunities was pretty stifled. So and then led is the woman and cloud movement over the last three years. And I think we have another 10 years to go to create a billion dollars in economic access. So right now, I actually would say, I run two companies, woman in cloud and mailer, and I’m on several boards, which are focused on driving economic access. And I really invest a lot of time to really think about the young generation that are coming into the tech, how do we create an easy access point? And then people who are in the tech, especially women, and a diverse ecosystem, how can they even create contribution in the society using technology, so that we actually can take a whole generation of people, they don’t have to worry about they don’t have to worry, like, we are taking them up the Maslow’s? You know, I would say, framework. So they are actually realizing the flow potential.

Vince Menzione  6:13 

And what prompted the shift. He took this pause, you decided to become an entrepreneur, you saw, I guess I’ll call the equity gap that existed, right, both in economic opportunity as well as the gender equity, maybe even societal equity, what led you in that journey? What what path? Like what, what brought you along that path?

Chaitra Vedullapalli  6:36 

Once this one is like, and I always people keep asking me for this one. What was a pivot? I think there were two pivots, I would say I was thinking to situation coming together to create a perfect shift for me. One is the growth, where I was in in Microsoft was not happening, like, it was just there was too much like too much. I would say glass ceiling for women at that time, you know, I would say is seven to eight years ago. And the second one was my mom was not really feeling well. So she was really in a very critical health state. So I had to take a sabbatical for six months. So I took time off spend time with her. And at that time, one of the things I realized is, I’m actually not realizing what I could do and contribute, like I have worked in the corporation, but really didn’t drive impact. So if I, so I did my eulogy work. And I realized is if I died today, that was kind of my whole thing. I don’t think of the five people that show up to be there and talk about that I have any contribution made? And that was something it was no, no, for me, I’m like, if you are here, you are one of those, I would say, one person and trillions of people out there, right? If you think about it, the combination of you being existing on this planet, you have is a duty to really make this world a better place. And I think it was more of a mental shift, I had to think about and didn’t know which direction I go, because I have no pathway to figure out what I will do on which direction I would go. So took time met with over 100 plus companies did their business plan reviews, looked at what made a company very successful, who was getting investment, why were they giving investment. And I liked the whole business modeling piece. I loved the partnering with enterprise piece, I just loved it. And that kind of helped me kind of think about a journey that I could take and find a unique space that can drive differentiation in the work we do. So economic development with digital technologies did not exist. And that is a space, I felt something I could contribute, create jobs and that space create the pipeline that we really need in the industry. And I think it was a series of experimentations Vince to get to two place saying, yep, I want to be in the place where I create economic Access for All.

Vince Menzione  9:13 

And so that led to maila. Can you tell us a little bit more about that organization, and its focus and mission

Chaitra Vedullapalli  9:19 

absolutely Vince. So I’ve made that we are not a typical technology company. Innovative cloud solutions are just a part of a strong foundation for our groundbreaking platform. So we build a smart communities through digital transformation, which is at the heart of everything that mailer does. And in Sanskrit mailer stands for community that creates commerce. So that’s what naila stands for. So we grant economic access for local leaders, businesses, as well as organization to build a sustainable place to live work and play. So they can thrive and grow together. So we as a company, believe Every business can become their own impact driven enterprise of changemakers rooted in generosity, education and connectivity. And that is where the local and the global innovation is born. And that is what Mila is when I think about Malawi, it really ignite economic access to digital transformation. And we have built a two three actually core economic development solution. One is the mainstream digital platform, which allows any city to put together a digital Mainstreet solution with all their small businesses. And we just implement with the city of Kirkland and we got, you know, we on boarded hundreds of businesses, before the holidays, and between created that economic impact. The second one we have is a marketplace technology, which allows any business to really go from zero to having an e commerce footprint, and really get ready or leverage it right away. So that technology exists. And the third one is the speaker engagement platform, we believe that events are the core area are the core, which creates a lot of economic development. And by investing in a technology to make the events experience easier, managing your speakers and your sponsors and your community and driving a robust connection, you can actually create a much better economic development and events can become the leading, I would say a trend for driving economic development that we need right now.

Vince Menzione  11:41 

You know, it strikes me that the work you do is so timely now, in this time, like no other that we’ve seen this last year, coming out of 2020. Just you know, I think about communities Mainstreet suffering quite a bit, if I look at the areas where we’ve seen the greatest impact, or the biggest negative impact, it’s been the smaller, you know, markets, all anybody that’s in commerce locally in a community, and then all of us having to work digitally. Right. So all the work you do seems to really, this seems to be like an area focus. I know you started this way before we got to COVID. So what have you seen that you didn’t expect to see this last year,

Chaitra Vedullapalli  12:20 

there were many events this year has been I would say, a true MBA program for anyone who wanted an MBA like I feel is like actually got an MBA program, because everything that worked in 2019, did not work in 2020. So a couple of things that I started to see was the access that needed to be created, which actually stifles significantly. So for example, as soon as COVID hit, we were doing pretty significantly really good as a business, what we started to see the contract started shrinking, everything became very tight. And you have to be very, very innovative in helping the customer to rethink their execution, or end strategies of how to acquire customers. So the acquisition of customers was a big shift of how you do it in a remote setting. So that one was a big shift. So we have to really look at technologies and solutions to accomplish customer acquisition. The second area we also saw was how people actually work in the remote environment. Nobody was used to like sharing the camera because it takes a different kind of space to sit down and do a meeting. And the environment that we were all working did was not conducive for remote working. Not everyone was set up for that. So that was a big shift for many of our customers. So we had to really rethink about how we do remote working and how do we get things accomplished? In 10 minutes, 15 minutes, instead of one hour meetings, because the chitchat was gone, the the small talk was gone. So we have to really think about how you engage but you’re giving back time for your customers to have time to read re energize from one meeting to another because spending time on computers actually take a lot of energy, then when you meet with people, you really can’t replenish your energy. The third one is how you use the technology for getting things done. That got changed significantly. So we have to really think about Community Solutions, we have to think about communication solution, thinking about more visible things that people could touch and feel virtually so everything had to be visual. So those were kind of like a big ones. But then at the end of the day, you know, as a company, you have to think about your bottom line. Think about your people you have, you know your employees, your partners and customers and they’re taken care of as humans and third one is the transformation is not a transformation of tech. knology, but it’s a transformation of human and the society itself that is happening. So we have to really think about the mind shifts, think about how they work, think about their current situation, and then really produce a solution that makes sense. So those were kind of the big, big changes, Vince that we saw during 2020. But overall, I would say is, when you go through a pandemic, we can all say we all went through a pandemic, that’s a good one. But I think we became more resilient, as a society more resilient as human beings more empathetic as human beings, which was a great progress in the society, which was, which was lacking.

Vince Menzione  15:44 

Yeah, you covered several points here. And I wanted to point out the mindfulness piece, and if called the digital fatigue we’ve all experienced, I know that’s an area. We talked about these long meetings being I feel that people are really, as we ended the year, people were really fatigued by all of the teams and zoom meetings. It’s just mental. You mentioned being exhausted, right? Because it requires so much additional concentration and focus to be on your screen all day. Long. Do you agree?

Chaitra Vedullapalli  16:14 

Yeah, totally agree. Totally agree. I am always looking for getting that extra five minutes just to close my eyes. So I don’t have to see the screen for another few because you have to be there for 1518 hours, right? So you really need a better way to relax yourself. And with the demands, staying at home with kids and with your partner with, you know, family going through a health crisis. It has been a very emotional roller coaster, like I would say each and every human being have gone through it. But it was a it was a roller coaster, and really hard to manage your mind. And the mindfulness was a very important aspect of growth for for me personally.

Vince Menzione  16:58 

Well, you know, I’ll share you know, we had Dr. Michael Gervais here just recently, in fact, right before the end of the year. And we talked about mindfulness and I have been working on my mindfulness as well. What What do you do specifically to, to, for your mindfulness? Do you have an exercise that you go through,

Chaitra Vedullapalli  17:14 

so I have few exercises, Vince to keep me sane. So when I get up in the morning, I do have as a practice to write things down. So that it allows me to kind of focus on what are the top three things I need to accomplish today? And what are those who and how do I want to accomplish it, that’s one second is the state of my mind. So kind of giving a word of the day and saying that this is the state I want to feel and I want to experience that feeling. So I kind of do that work with regards to you know, taking time off from the work every, you know, couple of hours, I would go and stretch and you know, do do whatever it takes to kind of get a digital break as much as possible. And then really spend time eating healthy food, like I cook pretty much every other day, if not every day, but I cook fresh food and half the time that the family to engage and have a conversation. But over the weekend, I spend a lot of time reading and doing a lot of creative art experiences that are not related to my work. So something like Mandela painting or doing, you know, knitting or, but nothing digital. So I try to do as less digital. And I just got a new, I would say a workout regimen to doing more rowing because what I learned is that it has a much more higher capacity to get your body to go into the theta phase and alpha phase, because of the repetative movements that you do. And it relaxes your body very quickly. And then doing breathing exercise every day, which is really focused on taking more oxygen and breathing from your nose rather than your mouth. So a lot of little things. But when you add it up, those habits make a big difference. So I Oh, believe that doing atomic habits for making tiny changes really give you a body to function at a high performance state.

Vince Menzione  19:12 

That’s amazing. I love what you shared. You know, I was thinking about we talked on just prior to starting recording today about being off the phone in the computer for three days and doing things that were physical or require concentration but you weren’t on your computer or on your phone. And I think that’s an important thing for all of us right to shut off those screens and maybe reflect or do whatever we’re doing that’s of mindfulness or driving a mindfulness strategy. Absolutely. So I want to peel back a little bit more on women in the cloud. The work that Nayla does is across several areas here all around a passion of doing good which I love. I love that you have a call it a greater passion or greater good that you’re you’re trying to achieve through all of the work you do. But we recently had Gabriella on the podcast, as you know, Gabriella Schuster, and we’ve talked about some of the efforts with women in the cloud. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about the work with women in the cloud? And how that got started?

Chaitra Vedullapalli  20:11 

Absolutely. Did you get a chance to listen to Gabriella stockmans? It was fabulous.

Vince Menzione  20:17 

Her TED talk was off the charts. I was waiting for it to get released. And actually, because I wanted to, I had wanted to witness it before we got to speak unfortunate came out a few days after. And she was like, you know, 10 is not a good number. Like it’s like off the charts. It was amazing. I and I’ve known Gabrielle, as you have for years, but you probably know her better than I do. She was so the passion was exuding is the way I would say it right. It was such a great, it was such a great talk,

Chaitra Vedullapalli  20:46 

I completely agree, I would say is I think she communicated the real landscape of what women go through in the tech society, right. That’s what I’ve put in. And I think she unveiled the real situation that we need to address and becoming an ally is an important aspect of doing that. But let me give you like take you on a journey for the women in cloud four years ago, when I was building my own company. And as I was building the enterprise ready solution, we couldn’t really raise the funding that we needed from the investors. And then neither we could get into an enterprise market. And that one is something once that is what I was good at, like really working in the enterprise market. But working in entrepreneur capacity was a completely different thing. I knew exactly the formula you need. I knew what we what kind of things you need to do. However, the access was missing. Because if you were not in the field, and you didn’t have those relationships with the Salesforce teams, you really can’t enter the enterprise market. It’s just impossible. So with all those challenges, I remember going and meeting with the Department of Commerce depart meeting with SBA meeting that all the community, nobody focused on enterprise access for women, and really focusing on how do we create economic opportunities for women. So then I started doing a lot of research, a couple of data trends was, at that time, $4.5 trillion dollars of opportunity was stated for cloud transformation by IDC. And then when you look at the data, it says less than 1% of the women are actually building enterprise solution. And the investors are not even investing in that space. There’s not a whole lot of solution. And when I looked at in the Microsoft channel, it was literally what three maximum across the globe, which will really focus on the enterprise market. There’s a very we may have a problem. So met with Gabriella and Gretchen and Karen Fazio absolutely amazing of women who have this vision and we looked at it, we said how about we create a vision and say, we would love to create an impact for a billion dollars in economic axis, as women are building solution in the enterprise market, very audacious goal. And this is not something Microsoft or you know, Google or the Amazon will do. It’s a community work that needs to happen. So we decided to really host the first event which is province, we were supposed to do for 50 people, we have 450 people show up. And that one was a clear directional and evidence that this needs to happen. Entrepreneurs came in the corporations came in the influencers came in, and also the public sector University, the legislators came in to say we have to do something about it. And that was the genesis of womaning Cloud eyes to really create a billion dollars in economic impact for women tech entrepreneurs who are building the solutions for the enterprise market. And it really happens three ways. One is through community building. And we have built a very strong community which creates access for women entrepreneurs to reach the enterprise market easily without re elected if they don’t have access through the sales network. They still have an alternative network that we have created for them to accomplish, and then work with the sales networks in such a way that it’s a mutual win for each other. The second one we did was the cloud accelerator in partnership with Microsoft, and getting the entrepreneurs ready for enterprise because it’s not that easy to even win a $10,000 contract if you don’t have certain metrics and certain readiness happen. And the third one is working with the legislators to really rethink the legislative action and policies that can unblock public sector as well as the private sector. What does that changes would look like? I think we are closer now. And we are in a place that we can say, Here are three areas, we want to go and do legislative policy, and let’s go build those actions that we need with our policymakers. And over the last two years, we have taken 15 women through the accelerator, we have won deals in Walmart, Home Depot, Cargill, and, you know, local cities. And these are did not happen just automatically, we have to architect to the outcome. And we have done closer to $80 million in economic access over the last two years.

Vince Menzione  25:40 

That’s really exciting. And the goal is a billion dollars in 10 years, is that the number?

Chaitra Vedullapalli  25:45 

Yes, by 2030. And we want to go there events with you being in our tribe of people to UN and saying we did it, we actually created an inclusive approach for women to contribute to the economy to be part of the tech sector, creating tech solutions, and really changing the world the way it should be right where everybody is able to have the freedom to contribute, create jobs and fulfill that American dream.

Vince Menzione  26:16 

I am all in. And you know, you have my commitment to support I am excited. Talking about the event, January 28. To 30th that you’re hosting was 400 people was supposed to be 50. And it’s going to be a big event. I want you to tell our listeners about it. Because I want them all to come register for this event. Can you tell us a little bit more

Chaitra Vedullapalli  26:37 

sure for the upcoming summit, it’s going to be digital Vince. And this is our third year of the summit, and is going to happen on January 28. To 30th, we are expecting at least a 1500 people across the globe to participate. What do you believe, to be uniquely true for the week summit, we are not just another conference of innovative ideas. We are a transformative community of powerful ideas that creates collective access for all aspiring leaders and entrepreneurs to become empowered change leaders that can make an inclusive economic impact. So last year, we had a spectacular summit with over 1500 people in person gathered in Washington State. And we all took a pledge to create $100 million, like 100 million woman community to unlock economic access. So we actually accomplished the network, we have a collective network, we actually have access to 100 million for men across the world. So with COVID, we have to really rethink think rethink redesign all our approaches for a digital summit. What I truly believe the innovation that we are going to be is the team is about collective power. And we are embarking on a lot of innovative innovations and partnerships, which will drive that digital economic development. So some of the things to look forward to at the summit is the first one is 870 percent of the experience is focused on networking, really live networking. So we have picked our technology called remail. And we have created 12 interactive sessions that allow you to meet people like just literally people, Vince, I can’t tell you how excited I am that you can actually have a face to face conversation from someone in India or from Spain, or from you know, Europe or Canada, literally very eclectic group of people are coming. This is a global collaboration, the 27 communities to reach the 100 million the men and really serving them strategically. From a corporate partnership we did we are expecting over 100 companies to contribute and raise their hands and pledge that they will all lead purpose driven leadership as well as create inclusive access. And we are making it easy accessible for them to participate. The thing that which I’m very excited is the volunteer program. We actually did a digital capstone course. So we have over 60 volunteers contributing to the summit. But they all have to go through a digital capstone course so they could actually advance their digital management skills and event management skills. So that when they come out at the tail end of the summit, they are employable, or they are employment ready. So which is pretty cool. And the last one is like in finite access. So the speaker network and our mentor network, we are looking closer to 700 people Vince across the globe to come and contribute. So it’s going to be pretty spectacular.

Vince Menzione  30:01 

It’s going to be very exciting. I’ve had several of your your speakers as guests here, and really excited for you to participate. I’ve seen the platform in action at your inspire event. And it’s very colorful. I’m a connector at heart. So sitting and watching videos for eight hours does not inspire me. But this platform, it allows for real connection. And I guess, people can create synergy, synergistic action or interaction through your platform, which I think is amazing. Absolutely. So, you know, this podcast focuses in on the Ultimate Guide to partnership is about successful partnerships. And we’ve talked about coming out of this year that we have never experienced before, what advice would you give to our listeners to help them optimize their success in 2021

Chaitra Vedullapalli  30:53 

Vince as we go into 2021. And beyond, I think the partner partnering is the core strategy that every company should embrace. And I would say partnership at multiple levels, public private partnership, partner to partner partnership, partner to hyperscale, or partnership, there are multiple types of partnership. But at the end of the day, you’re really looking at partnership to expand your market, create a blue ocean strategy, so that you’re very differentiated, you’re creating a differentiation in the market. So you can actually create that blue ocean strategies for your company. And number three is having access to talent, that without really going and hiding talent, because through the partnership, that talent, access becomes very easy. So you can go to market very quickly, you can accomplish the goals much more quickly. So from my big thing working over the years, Vince, you and I have been in this space for a long time, I believe and cobuild. co market Cosell is kind of my core mantra. So anything that I do is better together story or stronger together story. It takes time. It’s a very much of belief and a mindset that you have to move as a leaders. But once you do it, and once you have 1234 success, that becomes your true differentiation for being in the market. I can tell you for me love as well as women and cloud. I always believe that without cobuild, cold market Cosell not having a core strategy, you actually cannot sustain the company in the long term. And Microsoft has proven over and over and over again with 350,000 partners in the ecosystem. The growth is through the partnering strategy with companies and sometimes it is Rocky, sometimes it’s smooth. But overall, it’s a fantastic journey to take.

Vince Menzione  32:52 

You know, you mentioned something here that really struck me was around mindset. And I love By the way, I love the cobuild. co market and Cosell because it is together as opposed to we go off and do different things. Yeah, but the mindset many organizations, just a lot of organizations want to go it alone, right? Do you still find that?

Chaitra Vedullapalli  33:11 

Oh, yeah, I do. I do. Even when I’m doing the cloud accelerator, like, you know, the mindset is the first thing that you have to address and the belief that I feel safe doing partner because many of them have failed in how your partner right? And because partnering requires a very much inclusive mindset, a purpose driven mindset, and also approachability to failure in a very different way. Because you can blame each other you are actually experimenting all the time, as you get to that a perfect synergy or perfect dance that you want to have. And without, you know, I truly feel that’s the kryptonite for most of the companies is because the CEOs, they’re coming out of a company and they’re trying to build a company. And they really don’t know yet what the power of partnering looks like. Because if you have never done it in the past, it’s very hard to do. But if you had done it, and if you see the companies who are very successful in the market, who have grown to be a billion dollar company or a unicorn company, if you look at the heart of their execution, partnering is one of the key key, I would say, a linchpin for the company to grow at a scale. They can grow. Take any company and you’ve dissected. Partnering is at the core of their mindset and belief to really get to the markets they want to go the people they want to serve and the talent they want to connect and create that access for opportunities for each other.

Vince Menzione  34:51 

You’re speaking my language, you know, I put mindset at the core of all the successful principles of partnership right. So you Use the term inclusive mindset, by the way, which I really, I really enjoyed listening to us talk about this, just some really great comments. And so partnership is how we optimize success in 2021, is what I think I heard you say. So I want to pivot here for a moment, I want to talk a little bit more about you, we talked a little bit about your path and journey, but as a woman of color coming to the United States, right from India, tell me a little bit more about that journey. And how are you feeling at this time, in terms of our progress

Chaitra Vedullapalli  35:31 

Vince? This is such a powerful question. So let me see if I can do a justice for it. When I look at, if you would have asked me on 2019, I would say great, fantastic, doing good, have been very privileged and blessed. But 2020 has been a very, very eye opening, I think for most of the people didn’t realize how the country reacted to inclusion. I was just blown away that what I saw, and I think the COVID bought the real personalities of people into the world, and you got to see them in action. So from that standpoint, my feelings towards the world at this time is mixed, but also positive. I believe that economic access is still a concept, not a commitment by the leaders, by the Corporation, by influencers in our ecosystem, they don’t believe that economic access needs to be created. I don’t see that as a sense of urgency for everyone in the country, to have a job have to have an equal, you know, have equitable health care have equitable education, I don’t see that commitment yet. So it’s kind of hard to me when I see the UN goals of all the 17 goals. And all the goals are bred right now, when you think from where we are, nothing is turning green, because of the political landscape that we live in. So when I look at it is there too, there are many barriers right now, for every every community, whether you’re white, or brown or black, it doesn’t matter. There’s so many barriers that we have to remove, to make sure the world is more equitable for all. And we as a human society can live for another 100 years or maybe 200 years. So that it is it is a place that we want to right now it’s very lopsided. So for me personally, I would look at and you know, using my mindset and you know, mindfulness concepts, being positive, I would say, I will do my best in in the best of my capacity to create the movement to create awareness to create advocacy, so we can create the change we want. But as a community, I think everyone has to contribute right now they all have to get engaged. This is a place where the world is not a place I thought we were living. And it’s definitely the the virtual reality is gone. Yeah, living in that reality, true reality of how we live. So once it’s been very emotional, I would say, you know, you

Vince Menzione  38:08 

struck a chord with me here, I had been saying for most of this past year, that we in the tech sector, in particular, have perhaps an opportunity, but perhaps an obligation to lead at this time, because we are some of us are more advanced in terms of what we do our technologies are such, I believe we as a community can rise up here. Do you agree with that?

Chaitra Vedullapalli  38:32 

I agree, totally agree. 100%, I think each of us have the capacity to bring in the best of their attention, and really create the world we want to live in. And also, I’ve always said, Please get out of the social media for a moment and really get connected with people hands on, and be there for your family, be there for yourself be therefore, you know, friends, I think everyone needs each one of us right now.

Vince Menzione  38:59 

So you are such a strong role model to others. It strikes me just listening to you today, in fact, who are one of who is one of your role models,

Chaitra Vedullapalli  39:09 

Vince. There’s so many of them. But I’ll start with who actually is my true role model. I think the kids are my true role models. They really teach me to live the moment, moment to moment, be happy being there, having the ability to forgive ability to be more situational be happy all the time, like just be happy. So spending more time with the kids actually inspire me to feel like a youth and feel like I can contribute to a world with a very different lens. Now when I come to like the inspirational one, we do have Oprah’s and you know of the world I do get inspired because they teach you what the legends did in the world and how do you look at navigating but for me, the role model Vince is people like you that like Gabriela with Karen passio. The people who are in my network, who are I call them as my personal board are my true role models. So I look at people who are very positive attitude who have is let’s get it done. People are not afraid to experience failure, people who are coachable, who are committed, who are there to manifest the dreams and the visions that we all want to see. So those are the people that are my role models. So if anyone who has that criteria, I actually respect them, and I learned from them more than you know, they are learning from me, well, I

Vince Menzione  40:39 

learned from you as well. And I was humbled to be mentioned in the same sentence with those other leaders, you also brought up something I wanted to strike on here, you mentioned your kids, my children had been a great source, maybe it’s because we did spend so much time together this past year, my kids have been a great source, they have challenged some of my older beliefs, growing up at a different time and different generation. And I just love the way they look at the world with a sense of open eyes, a very different sense of everything that’s been going on this past year. And I guess you’re probably you’re probably just striking on that as well, with your children

Chaitra Vedullapalli  41:13 

I agree with, I spend every weekend with a group of five to 10 kids and coach them and be their adult mentor. And every Sunday, I take away a nugget for me to work on as an adult, which is fascinating, because I would have never seen myself even from that perspective, and they will open up from music to movements to how they approach solving a solution. And one thing that I’m very positive about our youth who are coming, they’re more inclusive, then when we were growing up with their more supportive of each other when they are connected as a community. And they are very vocal about what are the choices they want to make, we never had that one growing up, I never had a choice of what I should be doing. But the youth nowadays, and I think we should give a pat on our back that we actually did a pretty good job as parents to give them a voice to have the ability to stand up and lead a change or lead a movement or lead a personal transformation that they could and and that actually makes us feel good like the future is in good hands and we will be in a pretty good place. But the next 10 years Vince. Like when you start to see the cabinets the you know the Congress changing its face, I think we are in a good place.

Vince Menzione  42:37 

I so agree with you. I would love to learn you you meet with these young people. What advice do you give some of them?

Chaitra Vedullapalli  42:45 

What advice do I give them? So there are a few things that when when I look at advice first is I have to learn from them more than giving advice. But when I tell them is there are a few craft skills that you need to have one is being coachable. As you go through the journey, the more rigid You are the faster you fail, the more hurt you get. So being coachable fee, become like a tree. You can go deeper you can go wider you can go taller, you can create a shade you can create the the fruits but become very coachable. So even in the adversity, you know how to navigate through the world. Second is gained skills in leading people like learning how to work with people is the ultimate skill. Knowing human behaviors and laws and how you work with people is very important because most of the people when you’re working with them have their masks on, right. And you need to know how to work with them in a way that’s mutually beneficial for people who are working. The third one I do tell them is to manage their energy to manifest the dream. So which is your personal energy, because you only have so much capacity to focus on where you’re going to invest. And if you invest, invest consistently in the things that matter which are people and things and then focus on creating access for others. So if you got up the chain, make sure that you’re not closing the doors for others, you’re bringing others along the way. And if you do it consistently over and over, you know, over the years, you will see the impact Vince. And you really can get to your I would say the last mile of your life. And when you read your eulogy, you’ll say I actually did pretty good, right? So that’s what I want the kids to know is life is a video game, enjoy the game like play really well and be coachable during the whole process.

Vince Menzione  44:47 

You know, I want to end where we sort of began earlier you mentioned going through a eulogy exercise. What does Chitra want to be known for

Chaitra Vedullapalli  44:58 

chaitra needs To be known for a couple of things, one as a great mother, like, I’m a good mother, I was there a good daughter, a good friend, or a great friend, and a great partner, confidant, somebody who can rely on me when they need to, like I am there for people and I got their backs. That’s what I want to be known for. At the end of the day, the people who are in my life, I want them to feel that they have, they have been seen by me. They have, I’ve, they have felt that I hear them and they say something, I’m able to listen to what they haven’t. They’re valued. Each and every one person. That’s what I want to know. Like, I want to know them as that I was there for them when they needed me. So that would be my thing is that I showed up? Well for them.

Vince Menzione  45:49 

chatter you had been such a strong and amazing guest today. Do you have any parting comments or advice for our listeners, although I think what you just said, Really summed it up so beautifully.

Chaitra Vedullapalli  46:01 

I would say, Vince, thank you for having me. I want to basically have all your listeners to be part of gender inclusion movement in the tech industry, show up, show up well, you have everything you need to make a change in the industry, and we need you right now. And then for your friends and family and for your colleagues and your partners show up well be a true ally, become a true confidant and become an influencer in their life and rest everything will fall in its place.

Vince Menzione  46:33 

tighter. Thank you so much for being a guest on Ultimate Guide to partnering.

Chaitra Vedullapalli  46:37 

Thank you, Vince.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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