International Impact: Padmasree Warrior

Arguably the most popular Indian name in Silicon Valley, she stepped down as chief technology and strategy officer at Cisco Systems last September to join the Chinese NextEV Inc, as its CEO and head of software development in the US. Though it’s her first gig at an automobile start-up, Padmasree Warrior has been dubbed the ‘queen of the electric car biz’ by Fortune.

Inspirations: Her mother, who taught her ‘the power of love’; her father for teaching her to ‘focus on the big picture’ and her husband — who she met at 16 in college — for encouraging her ‘to take risks’.

College days: ‘When you go to an IIT…you go thinking that you are the smartest. And once you get there, you realise you’re not. I think that’s the first experience in humility,’ Warrior was once quoted as saying about her time at graduate school in New Delhi.

Read about our next power woman, Indra Nooyi.