Ian Scheffler
For Archana Vemulapalli (GEN’01, CGS’05) one of the most important workplace lessons is to treat your role with respect. “Sometimes I see people who are trying to work towards something before excelling in what they have at hand,” she says. “When you excel at what you have at hand, automatically people notice and they’re willing to tap you for something else.”
That lesson has taken Vemulapalli from Penn Engineering to the frontier of artificial intelligence (AI). After stints at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where she led product and strategy for AI and machine learning (ML), and the municipal government of Washington, D.C., where she served as CTO, this January, she took on the role of Corporate Vice President of Global Commercial Sales at Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD), the high-performance computing company and one of the leading makers of graphics processing units (GPUs), the specialized chips powering today’s AI revolution.
“People will always give a chance to someone that executes, that solves problems, and that’s showing up, ready to be a part of the solution and not be the one that only raises problems,” she says. “Having that intentionality makes a big difference.”