Welcome to the Iconic Podcast with me, Su, your host. The Iconic Podcast features candid conversations with successful Asian and AAPI leaders who share their personal journeys of challenges and triumphs. The Iconic Podcast is brought to you by the Asian American Foundation, by GoldHouse, and by the founders of the Asian Alumni Chapter of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and is made possible through the generous support of Alta Ventures.
And they would be like, are you sure you want engineering as a profession? Are you just going to get married and not use this degree? Don't you think an arts degree would be a better thing for you? You know, you're wasting our time, was really the message. And it was not one conversation, it was an entire year.
Welcome to the Iconic Podcast. I am very excited about today's episode. Not only are we welcoming one guest, we're actually going to be welcoming two guests. Let me explain. I am very excited to introduce a co-host to the show, somebody I hope that you will become very familiar with. She is a good friend of mine. I've known her for almost 30 years. Tina Shah Padhi, thank you, Tina, for joining us. Just so folks know a little bit about Tina, she runs the Innovation Accelerator at Findham, and before that she was the head of DEI at Russell Reynolds. And most of you who have been sort of involved with Stanford's Asian Alumni Association know her very well because she is our go-to host for many panels and a lot of fireside chats, and you also probably saw her at our last conference. So Tina, welcome to the show, and I hope this isn't the last time. I hope we do many shows together, and eventually I hope you're doing some of these shows without me.
Welcome, Tina. Soon, it's so great to be here. It's hard to believe that 30 years has passed since we met each other through Stanford, and it's just such a delight to be here with you today, interviewing Yamini, a close and dear friend who I've had the pleasure of knowing for almost 20 years. And it's indeed such a pleasure to have you here, Yamini. Yamini Rangan is the CEO of HubSpot, also known as the number one best software company by G2, the number 48 best places to work by Fortune, and Yamini has held leadership positions in blue chip companies including SAP, Workday, and Dropbox. She was named the most influential woman in business by the SF Business Times and also named as the best CEO for women by Comparably. Welcome here, Yamini.
Tina and Soon, such a pleasure to be here. Tina, I cannot believe that 20 years has passed since we first met, but it's just been such a joy to see a level of leadership that you have driven within our community and within DEI, and it's such a pleasure to be here. And Soon, great to see you again.
Likewise, terrific. Yamini, we are looking forward so much to exploring your leadership journey today. And you know, you come from a small, small town in Tamil Nadu, and I think you talk a little bit about how your perhaps initial dream was to just get out into a big city. Tell us how it was growing up in a small town in Tamil Nadu.
You are absolutely right. So I grew up in this real southern part of South India, almost at the tip of the country, and the town that I grew up in, it's called Udallpet. Nobody has heard it, and it literally is not on the map of the country. Even now, it's not on the map of the country. So it is a very, very small town, and my dad had a small business within the town, and he was building machinery to help agriculturists there. You know, it was a very rural town. It was full of rice and paddy fields, we would call it paddy fields, rice fields, and sugar cane factories. And so my dad was a small business, you know, serving there, and we grew up there in a tiny, tiny house with about 500 square foot, my elder sister and myself. And in some ways it was idyllic because we had such a great childhood. My parents were just awesome. My mom, who is an inspiration, we'll talk about her, she was, you know, awesome. We had such a great childhood until I recognized that the town didn't have a high school that went all the way through 12th grade.
And my mom actually grew up in Mumbai. I know you know Mumbai really, really well. So she came from the big city and she settled in this really small town with my dad. And she, back in the 1960s, had worked for the Reserve Bank of India, and she came into this little town that didn't have a bank. So her career was cut short, you know, pretty dramatically. And so when she had two daughters, I think one of the first things that she thought about was, I want my daughters to have an education. I want my daughters to be economically independent and very strong. And so it was very interesting growing in a small town that didn't have a school, but having a mom that had this vision for maybe herself that then she, you know, transferred into the vision for her two daughters of being economically independent, having a great education, and, you know, wanting to be someone socially. And so I grew up in that kind of like juxtaposition of those two things.
Wow, that's a truly amazing story. Growing up in a small village, no high school, a 500 square foot place, and yet here you are today. I mean, it's probably something you had never imagined. I was looking at your background and I heard some of your stories, and what was really interesting is I think your mom had a different path for you in mind when she was thinking about hopes and aspirations for her daughters, and I believe maybe your sister listened, but you didn't. Can you kind of explain what happened there?
Yes, yes. You know, so here was my mom in the small town, and we had two dinner conversations for most of my childhood. The first conversation was my mom would bring newspaper clippings of the first woman pilot, the lawyer that won this incredible case, the female lawyer who won this incredible case, the first doctor who did a very important kind of surgery, the first person who climbed Mount Everest. She would bring all these clippings and she would literally show us these clippings from newspapers and talk to us about, look, a woman can accomplish anything, and you've got to be the best at what you do. And we never quite grasped the whole concept at that time, but all of the conversations were about these amazing women doing incredible things. So we were like, yeah, we can fly if we wanted to. So it almost created this environment where we could dream bigger than where we were, and it probably has continued throughout my life of having the ability to think bigger and do bigger things than what my current constraints were, because I grew up in that environment.
The second dinner conversation was my mom's brother had immigrated to the US, again back in the 60s, and he then sponsored my mom. And obviously it wasn't for her to come, but she was like, okay, you guys are going to go to the US, and you're going to go because that gives you another bigger avenue for you to get an education. So the dinner conversations, and by the way, it took us 12 years, you know, after that initial application to finally get invited to come into the US as permanent residents, and we got our green card. But it created, we were talking about this for more than a decade of our childhood, when would we go to the US, what would we do, how would our lives look like there. And it was this true dream. Both of those created this environment. And you're absolutely right, Soon, the one thing that my mom said was like, oh, it would be great if both my daughters became doctors. And of course, my elder sibling was just so much like following the rules and the best, you know, like top A student and all of this, and she was like, okay, you know, I'm going to become a doctor. And she is, she runs the emergency department for the VA here. I'm super proud of her. And for me, I was like, no, you know, if she is going to become a doctor and if my mom wants her to become a doctor, then I got to do something that is different from that. I was kind of, you know, a bit rebellious. I said, no, I'm just not going to do so. I didn't show up for the exam for the medical school, and I ended up going into the engineering school, not because I had some initial passion in technology, but because I think I wanted to carve a different path, not be in the footsteps of someone. I just wanted to carve a different path, and that was a bit of my rebellion showing up early in my childhood.
Wow, there's so much packed in there, and Yamini, I can relate. You know, I think my father, as an engineer, said, whatever you do, don't become an engineer. And yet you and I talked a little bit about over Diwali what it was like to be a female engineer at that time in India. You were maybe one of a few, or maybe the only. Can you help us understand what that felt like to go through that journey?
Yeah, now we're again talking about India in the 80s, late 80s and early 90s, right? So it's a very, very different time. And so, you know, as part of the journey, my mom actually moved from that little town that we were in to a slightly bigger city in Tamil Nadu so I could finish my high school. So, you know, that in itself was a heavy weight on me. It's like, you know, here's the person, my dad stayed back in the small town, my mom was in a big city trying to navigate big city and, you know, high school with me and my sister. And, you know, my dad would commute back and forth. I mean, it's like a big weight on, you know, so someone who believes in you, who thinks your education is so important that they would disrupt their lives pretty significantly to make sacrifices to put you in a better school. I mean, that was kind of like, you know, what started the journey. And then I went into engineering school, and it was a school in the slightly larger city, but still, you know, in South India. And there were about 300 candidates within the first year program, and we had probably like less than 20. So we're talking about, you know, sub 10%, sub 5% range of women there. And what was interesting to me was that engineering was not considered an okay profession for women. This is back in the 80s, and literally the first year that I was there, I found I felt hostility from my male colleagues and students in the class, and they would be like, are you sure you want engineering as a profession? Are you just going to get married and not use this degree? Don't you think an arts degree would be a better thing for you? You know, you're wasting our time, was really the message. And it was not one conversation, it was an entire year. And I thought it was like maybe just the culture and maybe just the exposure that people had, because they really truly believed that engineering was not a profession for women. And I looked at it and, you know, a little bit of rebellion, I kind of made a bet with someone and I said, oh, you think that I'm not suited for engineering? I'm going to graduate at the top of the class. And at that time, I was nowhere near at the top of the class because I kind of joined engineering. And I made a bet, and after that I was like, okay, I'm going to take this seriously. You know, if there's so much pressure on me that I should not have done this and I should have gone to arts and science, then I'm going to show them that I can actually be successful being an engineer. And I did, you know, graduate at the top of the class.
So, wow, Yamini, I realize that I will never bet against you. That would be a bad bet. I love this rebellious defiance streak that you have, whether it's your mom challenging you to be a doctor or somebody challenging you to even hold your weight in your engineering class. It's an incredible story. And you mentioned that you and the family had this dream for over 10 years to come to the US, and so you finally came to the promised land. And I think you even talked about it with the mindset of it being an incredible adventure.
Yeah, look, I think like, you know, when you sit at dining tables for over a decade thinking about what life would be, you know, then and you actually get on the plane, and there was the first time, right? The first time I got on a plane was to come to the US, and, you know, it was just exciting. It was just this thing that we had been talking about, the thing that I had been working for, the thing that I wanted all my life. And so obviously I got a master's in computer engineering at that time, and it was, you know, once I settled in after the first week and I paid, you know, the house rent and got the first set of groceries, yeah, I had about like $100 or $150 in my bank account, and I said, okay, I have the first semester paid for school, and then I have my next month's rent, and I was sharing the apartment with like four other people. So what do I do? And so I started working at this place which was a restaurant. It was like the housing within the school, and they had a restaurant, and then they would deliver services. And it was Clemson, which is, you know, the university that I went to, and they had a big football stadium and games. And so as part of Clemson housing, I'd go to these games and I would serve, you know, food, serve like, you know, drinks, and it was just so great.
Are you ready to be part of a community that amplifies the voices of Asian leaders in business, government, and the arts? The founders of this podcast are members of the Asian Alumni Chapter of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, whose mission is to empower Asian and AAPI voices in our community. By subscribing to this podcast, you'll stay up to date on the latest Iconic episodes, and importantly, gain exclusive invitations to select Stanford Asian alumni events that can provide useful insights and a powerful network to help you on your personal and professional journeys. Go to iconicpodcast.com and subscribe today. Join us and be a part of a community that's shaping the future of Asian leadership.
Look, I never planned to be a CEO, and it was not a linear path. It probably, I got here because of the learning, curiosity, ability to take feedback, ability to rewrite playbooks. That's really what got me here, and never quite intended to get to this.
Fast forward, right, from Clemson to University of California at Berkeley. I think we actually met close to the time when you were graduating. Tell us a little bit about how it was in terms of succeeding in an MBA program at Berkeley.
Yeah, and look, I think as an engineer, after I graduated with a master's, I worked as an engineer for a few years, and it was really formative. I think, you know, I give a lot of credit to like first principles thinking and problem solving that came from those early years. And I just love the technology industry, you know, at the pace of the technology industry, the level of innovation, how quickly things change, and how you got to like stay on top. I really like that, but I felt like I was drawn more towards the business side of technology versus kind of being in engineering, which is why I went to Berkeley Business School, and it was fantastic. It was just amazing, again, surrounded by people from various fields, super curious, best at what they were doing, but wanted to continue to learn and grow. I mean, it was like a perfect environment. I just love Berkeley. I still go back and try to teach and try to contribute there, and that's the kind of environment that brings out the best in me. And so I graduated from there thinking I wanted to be in product marketing. It made complete sense in my head, you know, I understand technology, I love the industry, but I really wanted to communicate the value of technology. So product marketing seemed like a great fit. And so I get my first job, and this was at Siebel, which was the original CRM company. It's interesting, I've just been in CRM for my whole career, but I got my product marketing job. However, this was, you know, around 2001, 2002, we had gone through a massive correction within the market. Nobody was hiring. So the first day that I show up at work, they said, well, we don't have your product marketing job, but you can be in sales. And they literally handed me a quota and they said, go sell. Now you got to imagine the conversation I had with my parents back then. Not only was I disappointing to them because I didn't become a doctor, I went into engineering, and now I was turning into a salesperson with a quota, and they were like, what are you doing?
Someone, someone hopefully someone helped you figure out this whole thing.
