Challenge: 1992, Hyderabad to Chicago—H-1B in pocket, MBA dream, and a son who will never walk.
Accountable: every time the boy cried in the night, he didn’t curse the visa, didn’t curse Microsoft—he said “this is my life, I’ll make it count.”
Assimilated: took the American boardroom, but kept the Indian heart. Taught the company to listen, to share, to care—turned “we” into a weapon.
Allegiance: “I’m a product of the American dream,” he tells kids at Harvard. Pours millions into disability research, into diversity, into the next kid who’ll fly coach with a visa stamp.
Permanent: empathy isn’t a meeting, it’s muscle.
Prudent: didn’t burn cash—he invested in cloud, in people, in the long game.
Pragmatic: Windows phone dies? Kill it. Azure slow? Fix it. People scared? Talk.
Lemons: son can’t stand, visa delays, corporate politics.
What he made: Microsoft alive, human, growing.
Read: Hit Refresh—he wrote it himself.
Grateful Immigrant 