Indra Nooyi, an Indian-origin American executive who hails from Chennai is the current Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo. She was one among the highest paid CEO’s in America, according to a recent survey report. Nooyi’s name appeared in the list of 50 women to watch in 2007 and 2008, according to a survey conducted by Wall Street Journal. She was one among Time’s list of 100 most influential people in the world and she also bagged the top position of most powerful woman in business, by a ranking done by Forbes (2009 and 2010).
According to Nooyi, ”Just because you are CEO, don’t think you have landed. You must continually increase your learning, the way you think, and the way you approach the organization. I’ve never forgotten that.”
Nooyi joined the company PepsiCo in the year 1994 and was appointed to the post of CFO in 2001.She rose to the position of CEO in 2007 and has been contributing a major share in the development of the company for more than a decade.
Nooyi completed graduation from Madras Christian College and post graduation in Management from Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta. She began her career as a product manager at Johnson & Johnson.
Meyya Meyyappan is the Chief Scientist for Exploration Technology at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA. Until June 2006, he served as the Director of the Center for Nanotechnology at NASA Ames.
Meyyappan has authored or co-authored over 225 articles in peer- reviewed journals and made over 200 Invited/Keynote/Plenary Talks in nanotechnology subjects across the world. His research interests include carbon nanotubes, graphene, and various inorganic nanowires, their growth and characterization, and application development in chemical and biosensors, instrumentation, electronics and optoelectronics. He has worked to include nanotechnology products into space missions as well as transferring technologies to industry for commercialization.
Meyyappan is a founding member of the Interagency Working Group on Nanotechnology (IWGN) established by the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The IWGN was responsible for putting together the US National Nanotechnology Initiative.
For his sustained contributions to nanotechnology, Meyyappan was inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Council Hall of Fame in February 2009.
Padma Lakshmi
Padma Lakshmi is a well-known internationally accepted model, who was the favourite of top designers such as Emanuel Ungaro, Ralph Lauren and Alberta Ferratti. She started her modeling career when she was just 18 and has appeared on the covers of many promonent magazines like RedBook, Vogue India, FHM, Cosmopolitan, L’Officiel India, Asian Woman, Avenue, Industry Magazine, Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country and Newsweek.
She says, “I was the first Indian model to have a career in Paris, Milan and New York. I’m the first one to admit that I was a novelty.’’
Along with modeling, Lakshmi started hosting cookery shows such as Padma’s Passport and Top Chef and she also published many cookery books.”Easy Exotic”, her first cookbook was named as the Best First Book in the year 1999 at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards conducted at Versailles. She was also nominated for Emmy Award as “Outstanding Host on a Reality-Competition in 2006.
Padma is basically from an Iyengar Brahmin family based in Chennai, who did her schooling and higher education in U.S. She completed graduation in Theatre Arts from Clark University in Massachusetts.
Kamala Harris is the current attorney General of California who was featured as one of ‘America’s 20 Most Powerful Women’, by Newsweek. Prior to this, she served as the District Attorney of San Francisco for six years, from 2004 to 2010.
Kamala is the first female to be elected as the attorney general of California and the first Asian-American to serve this prestigious post .
During her tenure as the District Attorney of San Francisco, Kamala fought against violence, crime and she was also behind the implementation of tough gun charging policies. Moreover, she focused on child assault, public integrity and environmental crimes. She increased the conviction charges for serious and violent crimes and extended helping hand to the victims of crime and their family members.
Born to a Tamil mother and African- American father, Kamala was bought up in California and she completed her higher education from the universities of California and Howard.
Kavitark Ram Shriram is a board member of Google and one of the first investors in Google. He runs his own investment firm, Sherpalo Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in promising new disruptive technologies, established in the year 2000.
In 2005, Shriram was named as one among the top three high-tech dealmakers by Forbes, recognizing his talents and foresight. Recently, he also made it to Forbes’ list of ‘richest Indian Americans’, with a net worth of $1.6 billion.
‘He is always eager to roll up his sleeves and work closely with founding teams on the challenging issues that confront and sometimes confound early stage ventures,’ saysGoogle, reports Rediff.
Shriram is also an investor in a global mobile Ad Network, InMobi. He serves on the boards of StumbleUpon, Zazzle, Next Jump, Mevio and PaperlessPost.com, and also serves on the advisory board of Naukri.com.
Shriram completed his graduation in science from Loyola College of Chennai, Madras University and holds an MBA from the Ross School of Business affiliated to University of Michigan.
Ambati is a Tamil-origin ophthalmologist, educator, and researcher who made it to the Guinness Book of World Records by becoming the youngest doctor; at the age of 17! He was successful in re-defining the minimum age limit for a person to join medical school in the west.
Presently, he works as the Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences & Director of Corneal Research at the University of Utah.
Ambati has showcased extreme skills in various fields of science from early childhood and has now turned out to be a highly esteemed personality in the world of medical science. According to him, being a good listener, being thoughtful and perseverance are the three traits a successful person should possess.
His contribution in correcting myopia, hyperopia, and astigmatism through LASIK is quite noteworthy.
Balamurali has received many prestigious awards for his medical brilliance which includes Raja-Lakshmi Award from Sri Raja-Lakshmi Foundation, Chennai, in the year 1995.
Sendhil Ramamurthy is an American actor, who was born in Chicago to Hindu Tamil immigrant parents from India.
He has acted in many popular movies such as Love & Debate, Orient Express, Blind Dating, Little India, Shor in the City and It’s a Wonderful Afterlife.
He has also appeared on several TV shows, including Ellen, Casualty, Guiding Light, Grey’s Anatomy, Ultimate Force, CSI: Miami, Heroes, Covert Affairs and Numb3rs.
He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history and then attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London, from which he graduated in the year 1999.
Aziz Ansari
Aziz Ansari, an Indian-origin American writer and stand-up comedian has huge fan following him, which goes up to more than 1.7 million on Twitter. Ansari, who holds a graduation in marketing from Leonard N. Stern School of Business at NewYork University, started his career performing stand-up comedy. He got a place in the “Hot List” of Rolling Stone in the year 2005 and was also honoured with the Jury Award for “Best Standup” at HBO’s U.S Comedy Arts Festival in the year 2006.
S. Somasegar is the Corporate Vice President of the Developer Division at Microsoft Corporation. Till September 2011, he served as the Senior Vice President of the company.
He is responsible for engineering and marketing for developer tools and services, programming languages and runtimes designed for a broad base of software developers and development teams, including the Visual Studio and Expression families of products, .NET Framework, and Team Foundation Server.
Somasegar started the India Development Center in Hyderabad and the Microsoft Canada Development Center in Vancouver.
He was honoured with the Asian American Engineer of the Year Award in 2008.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics and communication engineering from College of Engineering, Anna University and an M.S. in computer engineering from Louisiana State University.
He is the owner of four patents and before joining as the head of the developers’ division, Somasegar had worked on eight different operating system releases.
Jaishankar Ganesh
Jaishankar Ganesh is the first permanent dean of Asian Indian descent at Rutgers School of Business–Camden.
“Dr. Ganesh is an exceptional administrator and scholar, and an energetic visionary. I am confident that he will help to advance the Rutgers School of Business–Camden to its rightful place as a premier center for education and business development in our region and state,” said Richard L. McCormick, president of Rutgers, while announcing the appointment of Ganesh. He also added that “his focus on developing new models for business education that address the career demands of the coming decades will help to lead Rutgers to the next level of prominence in undergraduate and graduate business education.”
Ganesh holds a Ph.D. in Marketing and International Business from the University of Houston and an MBA degree from the same university. He received his bachelor’s degree in Physics from the Loyola Autonomous College, Madras and second degree in Instrument Technology from the Madras Institute of Technology.
Take off with Natarajan 
Kamala Haris is my wife’s Chitti Rajalakshmi’s daughtere Dr. Shyamala Haris’ daughter. In short she is related to us thro my wife’s side. I am now 80 years. Our blessings to their entire family members please. RAJAGOPAL SUBRAMANIAN
Haven’t you heard about Vilayanur Ramachandran a tamilian neuroscientist
can i get some details of Vilayanur Ramachandran from you pl ?
Why microsoft Sundar Pitchai is in the list? should be better than many of them in the list
Why he should not be in the list ! ..If you have got recent updated list with source authentication, i will be happy to share the inf. in my blog. You are most welcome to share the inf . you have pl. Have A nice day.
Sundar pitchai should be listed…
Thanks.. Pl see my earlier Blog Posts on sundar pichai under ” Famous Indians In silicon valley .”
I am just proud of that I am the tamilen. As my request Mr sundar pichai should be added here
Good one. Proud to be a Tamilian. Thanks Natarajan for compiling and posting this
Vivek murthy surgeon general also ours
thanks for the update .
I feel happy to know that we Indians are making our presence felt even in countries where a lot of struggle is inevitable, be it Tamils,Telugus or any Indian, we are able to stand firm and achieve our goals. I have always enjoyed the content posted on this website.
Feeling very proud to be a Tamilian.