President & Managing Director, Lucent Technologies India

Krishna Tanuku, 50, is President & Managing Director of the Lucent Technologies India R&D Program. His organization develops software to support multiple business units of Lucent with a strong focus on Wireless applications. He has a Ph.D. in computer communications from the University of California at Berkeley and an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago. A career that started in Bell Labs in 1978 has come full swing with the India R&D Program being certified a Bell Labs center. A college-recruit from Berkeley, his significant achievement at Bell labs was designing and implementing a distributed computing environment to support large-scale software development. He also played a key role in the creation of 3B-computer architecture to support switching applications. Krishna then made a career shift into global activities that included product and market management activities. In 1985 Krishna undertook a major initiative in globalization by establishing the first customer support center in China. Then in 1989 he set up AT&T in India and almost fathered the telecom industry in India. During his tenure, Krishna helped found the American Chamber of Commerce in India, which represents US business interests and was re-elected by peers for five consecutive years as Executive Committee Member and co-Chairman. In 1994 Krishna was recognized with an international award by the Wisitex Foundation as "MAN of the YEAR 1994 - Management and Business Vision" for "business acumen, innovative ideas, services and leadership in the field of Telecommunication and Informatics". This Award was conferred for his untiring efforts in globalization of technologies. He then returned as Global Operations Director to AT&T on-line services. Retaining his fervor for the globalization of R&D, Krishna once again took on the challenge to enhance the Lucent R&D footprint across the globe and set up the India R&D Program for Lucent's wireless business in 1997. Today, he leads a team of some 1000 technical minds that represent some of the world's finest talent in software development. Krishna is the current Bangalore Chapter President of the American Chamber of Commerce and lives with his wife and a younger daughter in Bangalore (India) while his older daughter studies at Washington D.C.