My journey to becoming a CIO - Radhika Chennakeshavula

Thank you, Sylvia.

Sylvia, thank you for having me here. My name is Radhika Chennakeshavula. I'm the CIO of Silicon Labs, here for a little less than a year, getting close to a year now. I've been working in IT for about 27 years now. If I have to tell about my journey, I started as a trainer. I used to train in C, C++, and some of the very early technologies, and then I became a programmer. Then my leadership journey started. Most of my leadership journey was with GE. I've spent about 16 plus years there, and that's where I'm one of those GE veterans who is trained in Crotonville. So my leadership practice has come heavily from there. After that, I've taken up a role with Micron, and then with Western Digital. When I started with Micron, that's when I moved into semiconductor from consumer electronic goods, and I'm enjoying the whole semiconductor space now, continuing into Silicon Labs. Talking about my journey and how I got into this role of CIO, one thing I learned in this process, Sylvia, is that there's no one path to become a CIO or a CEO or one of those. Depending on opportunities, depending on your learning curve, and depending on your readiness to the roles, several of those factors play a role. In my case, I think the breadth that I gained was a big help for me. Looking back in my career, I spent my first early about 10 years gaining the depth of programming and then being an architect, purely the Java and related programming aspects. Then I started my first leadership role, and my first leadership role was infrastructure, and that's when my leadership internship journey started. Even now, I tell people that once I started my leadership journey, I have been an intern all through my leadership career. That's because I started as an infrastructure leader where I was not the expert; there were experts in that space, and I had to provide pure leadership, enabling them to accomplish goals for themselves and the company, being a servant leader. Then my next leadership role was into data analytics. Once again, I was not an expert; I was completely out of my comfort zone. Then similarly, after that, I took some M&A and then moved into finance. In the process, while I continue to be an intern and learning and enabling those teams, I gained a good breadth. Early in my career, I had depth, and then later I gained breadth. When the Micron role came up as an India head, it started as a small role of an outsourcing center where they wanted to do an India center with about 150 members. However, once I joined, the team started to see the value of the talent in India, and when I left them after three years, I ended up hiring 1200 members for the IT team. That helped me in setting up and driving larger teams in the global ecosystem. So this whole experience has paved a good path for me to become where I am today.

Right. I think before I jump into the leadership aspect, Sylvia, I think some of these qualities that we carry, I strongly believe that it comes from our upbringing and our foundational values. I come from a farming and hardworking background. My father is a farmer. He never went to school. However, he has done a fantastic job as a farmer. He taught us those very early hardworking matters. He never accepted reasons. He always taught us results: did you get it done or not? I think part of that is still my personality as a leader. At times, I had to be careful not to come across too directing, because in the mode of getting results done, but as you grow as a leader, equally you need to be empathetic because not everybody operates at the same pace. So I would be watching my pacing aspect of it. However, results matter, not reasons. Now we call it a management lesson, but I think that I was taught very early in my childhood. That became my style of operating. Eventually, mentors shaped how and who I am. Sylvia, I have had mentors at every phase. Some consciously I requested them to mentor me, and some happened in the flow of me taking different roles, establishing a good connect. Some of my mentors have been my mentors for about 16 to 18 years now. They are long-term mentors, not very specific to the role. However, when I've taken some roles, I usually go and choose mentors depending on what I need. For example, when I joined my first semiconductor company, I knew I didn't have the functional knowledge. Then I went and selected a mentor and said, 'Hey, can you please mentor me? This is what I'm looking from you, and here is what I can offer you.' And then I usually time-box these mentoring relations so that I'm not the only one consuming the leader's time all the time. So I do it like one to one and a half years of request, and then I let them go and mentor somebody else. In the same process, I do pick mentees. I continue to pick mentees within the company and outside the company. I still mentor quite a few people from my previous companies as well. So other than my upbringing and values, the next set of change in whatever I am as a leader is all coming from my mentors.

People, people, and people. I love people as a person. I am an extrovert. I call myself a triple extrovert, and my energy comes from people. I'm so passionate about people that often, even if there are times where I've had difficult conversations with some of my team members, I cannot be upset with them or angry at them for a longer time because I love people. So I think I'm very passionate about people as a leader. Personally, I'm extremely passionate about health and well-being. I have been a yoga practitioner for 20 plus years, and now I'm a trainer for the last seven years. I'm a scuba diver, and I hike. Recently, I hiked Kilimanjaro, by the way.

Thank you. It's a fascinating experience. So on a personal side, I'm very passionate about health.

Thanks. Bye-bye.