Syamala Raghuram

Syamala is an entrepreneur and a result-oriented professional with a passion for partnering and fostering trusted business relationships. She collaborates with her co-founders and clients to deliver high-quality technical projects for fortune 100 clients.She is on the advisory board of a couple women startups which are currently in stealth mode. Furthermore, she has twenty+ years of experience working with business stakeholders, CXO’s and executives enabling solutions and expertise to problem-solving and improving the performance of companies across various fortune 500 companies.

Syamala has been a Servant Leader of her community for the last 10 years and has engaged with few non-profits to promote entrepreneurship, women & youth empowerment, temple fundraising, Tamil community volunteering events, etc. She has positively influenced her workplace and industry in so many ways.  With a heavy involvement in Entrepreneurship Associations and many other organizations, she is focused on building strong businesses throughout the community. She also supports and provides thought leadership to women on startups across technology, retail, and education.For instance, she has advised East coast women entrepreneurs to enter Silicon Valley market with clear Go-To-Market strategy. Her astounding enthusiasm and tenacity helps her to balances between family, work and the community. Last but not least, she is a loving mom of two teenagers in high school, constantly empowering them to choose their own career by instilling critical skills in them.

As a woman entrepreneur, she is very passionate to empower women and entrepreneurship, and joined the executive Silicon Valley (SV) Chapter Leadership and SV Women and Youth Chair of American Tamil Entrepreneurs Association (ATEA) a non-profit organization.

  • Spearheaded the Youth Boot Camp Innovation & Entrepreneurship Startup 101, where she successfully organized end to end from concept, design, venue partnership at Cisco campus and empowered 45 + youth (high school and college freshman) with innovation, startup ideas, to pitch in front of Chief Guest serial entrepreneur Rajesh Setty and industry leaders. Created a separate youth group as part of the mission to educate, and empower youth in bay area
  • As the Women Chair, she conducted an exclusive Women Meet upwith aspiring women entrepreneurs to help lay the roadmap for women inclusion in annual event to support women entrepreneurs at every stage of the startup business life cycle.
  • In the role ofTreasurer, she streamlined the accounting and operations of the non-profit business
  • Travelled across US and represented the west region of ATEA SV leadership at Dallas, TX for Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America (FETNA) & TEFCON focusing on cultural, entrepreneurship, themes where she networked with Industry leaders across the US, to emphasis on women empowerment. She represented as SV Women lead in the two-day Regional Conference and networked with Alumni & Industry leaders including Chandrika Tandon (American Businesswomen & Grammy nominated artist)

 

Giving back to the community has been a prime focus to her that she spent 40+ hours a month in the last 3 years towards volunteering efforts. Syamala being a state university rank holder in Tamil highly believes in contributing to Tamil community to help instill the cultural and traditional values for current & future generations.

As a supporter of California Tamil Academy, a nonprofit community education, she has volunteered for more than a decade in the roles as:

  • Teacher, Book officer & Co- Principal of Cupertino, the largest branch
  • Facilities Lead and part of the Executive committee for Diaspora Tamil Education & Cultural World Conference (DTEC 2012)
  • Campaign Officer for online World Tamil Academy
  • Sponsorship Lead in Executive committee of DTEC 2016

As a lead volunteer for Concord Shiva Murugan Temple (CSMT) she supports in various capacities:

  • As a lead coordinator for the GALA Annual Event 2018, she successfully raised $225k in a single daywith donor match. She orchestrated the entire event plan that had Assembly Member, Ash Kalra, Fremont Mayor & Vice Mayor as chief guests
  • Led the cultural event for CSMT Thiruvizha event, organized more than 24 + diversified cultural programs within a short span of 4 weeks. The event was focused on creating an awareness of the temple new construction, fundraising and to preserve the Indian culture and heritage for future generations.

Other Volunteering Activities with Communities includes Bay Area Tamil Mandram (BATM),  Bay Area Fine Arts (BAFA) 2017, 2018 & 2019 Bharathi Tamil Sangam (BATS) & B&B Entertainments.

In conclusion, breaking the glass has been a very important milestone that she accomplished after the corporate fiasco. As a woman entrepreneur and co-founder of Vitapoly, she is firm that more women should become entrepreneurs as she continuously supports aspiring women entrepreneurs as part of women empowerment. Her favorite quote to all aspiring women and youth entrepreneurs is “If a male leader takes you where you want to be, a female leader takes you where you ought to be”.