Small Business Trends author and CMO at Meylah, Chaitra Vedullapalli, recently won a Women of Inspiration Award at Microsoft Inspire. The award is given to a woman who mentors other women and drives change and growth. Small Business Trends spoke to Vedullapalli about what got her nominated, her company and her plans to leverage the opportunities the Internet provides.
“Overall the bigger mission we have is to empower a million businesses to do business online,” she says. That part of the change she hopes to foster falls under the umbrella of cloud solution provider. Meylah offers cloud advisory and migration services to that end.
“We focus on a hybrid cloud environment,” Vedullapalli says.
Business Portfolio
However, that’s only one aspect of the swath she hopes to cut. Her business portfolio includes Lead Architect at Ignite Washington and a strategic adviser at the trade association, The Small Business Web. This experience lends itself to a larger perspective.
“At the end of the day, it’s all about economic growth, job creation and helping companies transform to the cloud,” she says. “If I can help a million businesses we can easily impact a million jobs.”
Tech Revolution
Whereas at least one slight on the tech revolution has been it eliminates jobs, Vedullapalli focuses her efforts in a more humanitarian way. She doesn’t believe in replacing humans with technology but that a more sustainable solution for both is possible.
“Our job is to make sure the jobs are created,” she explains. “We want to architect a transformation that allows these jobs to evolve and make the entire ecosystem more intelligent.”
Thought Leader
To that end, the company has been recognized as a thought leader in this area in Washington state. They’ve built their own technology IP allowing clients to create mobile stores while furthering the bigger mission. There are other features available like assessment tools that make the whole transformation to the cloud possible and easier.
Another aspect she focuses on is how human skill sets can keep pace with technological change. Vedullapalli has a wealth of personal professional change and previous challenges to draw on.
Software during the recession
“In 2008 my job at Microsoft was to activate the SMB there and create an environment so customers would buy software during that recession.”
According to Vedullapalli, sustainability needs to act like a flux to mesh technology and people. She says it should have three aspects including access to opportunity, talent and education and an action plan to bring everything together. She explains how she frames up the bigger picture.
Opportunity
“When you think about any transformation, you need to think about what that opportunity looks like for every human being and not just the company.”
It’s not hard to see why Vedullapalli won the Inspire award and how she manages to motivate clients, co workers and everyone she meets to do good. Her ambitions are lofty. At the end of our talk she shares another scenario she hopes to accomplish so people benefit from the technologies they create.
“I want to have a seat at the table at the United Nations to architect a blueprint to create 600 million to 1 billion jobs
in the SMB space,” she says.
Images: MicrosoftAlumni.com (top); Chaitra Vedullapalli (inside)