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NORTH AMERICAN Newsline JANUARY 12, 2024 | The Indian Eye 22

NEWSMAKERS OF THE WEEK

Selected stories about Indian diaspora from our website www.theindianeye.com

SATYA NADELLA ANANYA ZUTSHI

Microsoft chief is named the Biochemist develops a novel

CEO of the Year therapy to combat cancer

atya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft has been chosen as the CNN Busi-
ness’ CEO of the Year. According to CNN Business, under his leader-
Sship, the company is re-emerging as a tech innovator after years of riding
the success of Windows. Wall Street has noticed, too: Microsoft’s stock is up nanya Zutshi’s desire to help fight cancer isn’t just a business choice – it’s
55% this year. personal as well. Her father died from cancer. At the time, some of the
Nadella was chosen as the CEO of the Year, beating out other contend- Afirst cell-based therapies were in clinical trials, but none could treat his
ers including Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and specific disease. Years later as a Blavatnik Fellow, the more she studied cancer
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. and existing therapies, the more Zutshi wanted a new approach. “There are
a lot of treatments in the world that are iteratively better,” Zutshi said. “And
“There’s no question 2023 was the year of AI,” Nadella told CNN those are important. We need those treatments.”
Ananya Zutshi wanted a career in pharmacology biotech. She studied
in an emailed response. “We’re no longer just talking about inno- biomedical engineering as an undergraduate at Duke University, where she
vation in the abstract; we’re seeing real product-making, deploy- participated in genetic and tissue engineering research. Zutshi originally
planned to pursue a Ph.D., but instead spent 4 years at Catalent Pharma
ment and productivity gains. At the end of the day, though, this Solutions, a leading pharma/biotech contract manufacturing development

innovation will only be useful if it’s empowering all of us in our organization.
Realizing her excitement around being part of the team, Zutshi decided
careers, in our communities, in our countries.” not to pursue a Ph.D. However, she now knew that she likely needed another
advanced degree to be a decision maker in an industry like pharma/biotech.
Born in India, Nadella came to the US in the late 1980s to pursue a mas- Zutshi joined the second-ever cohort of students in the MS/MBA in Engi-
ter’s in computer science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He later neering Sciences degree run jointly by the Harvard John A. Paulson School
did an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Harvard Business School
joined the company in 1992 as an engineer. Nadella was promoted to CEO (HBS).
nearly 10 years ago. During her time at Harvard, Zutshi discovered the power of entrepre-
In 2016, under the leadership of Nadella, the company partnered with neurship and translation of novel technology. Within a year of leaving Har-
OpenAI — a then-emerging company with new AI tools — and allowed vard, Zutshi had founded and become CEO of her first company: Guardian
them to operate the technology on its Azure cloud servers in exchange for Bio, a pharma-biotech company developing a novel therapy to combat cancer.
access to those tools. Continued on next page... >>

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