Madhavi Vuppalapati (born 23 March 1972) is founder, CEO, and Chairperson of Prithvi Information Solutions (“Prithvi”). She is married and has one child and lives in Seattle, Washington. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Madhavi holds a master's degree in Computational Mechanics. Madhavi founded the telecom and IT services multinational Prithvi in 1998, and together with her brother Satish Vuppalapati, took the company public in India 7 years later. She is the only female CEO amongst the top 50 Indian IT and telecom services companies. Early life and education Born in Chirala, Andhra Pradesh, India to Ramarao Vuppalapati, an industrialist and professor of physics, and Murthy Devi, a homemaker, Madhavi is the second of 3 children. She attended St. Anthony’s High School, where she was the top student in her class. She went on to study computer science at Osmania University in Hyderabad, where she graduated in 1993 with a Bachelor of Engineering degree. Madhavi went on to attend Carnegie Mellon University, graduating in 1995 with a master's degree in Computational Mathematics. Career Madhavi joined Alcoa as a contract design engineer shortly after graduating, and began working on various assignments in the Pittsburgh area. After being laid off three times in three years due to project cancellations and a sketchy economy, a time she attributes to being the turning point in her career, Madhavi decided to go into business for herself. She founded Prithvi Information Solutions in 1998, and together with several friends from CMU oriented the company toward providing software R&D and data analytics services. Initially to float the business, Prithvi engaged in consulting work which it further expanded to software and IT services provided from the Prithvi’s India facility. The company grew quickly and went public in 2005 on revenues of $60 M.In 2006 Madhavi returned to her alma mater to help Turing Award winner Dr. Raj Reddy establish the Global Innovation Center in conjunction with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Entrepreneurship As an entrepreneur herself, Madhavi supports entrepreneurship through her involvement with The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE) and personal mentoring of five craft-based microbusinesses (see Philanthropy and Charitable Works below). She served on the Boards of TIE Pittsburgh from 2006–2008, and TIE Seattle from 2010. Recognition Business Today awarded Madhavi as one of "The 10 rising stars to represent the epitome of today’s women, for whom nothing is impossible". Madhavi was selected by the Indian School