Neelam Dhawan

The icon



As the head of Microsoft India, Neelam Dhawan is an icon for women in the IT
industry. There were just a handful women in the industry way back in the early

80s when she began her career accidentally at HCL. She had a hard hitting

learning experience in sales and marketing across IBM and Compaq followed by HP

post the HP-Compaq, merger before she joined Microsoft in 2005. Recalls Dhawan

in an article she wrote for Dataquest, "Personally, I can only

recall one instance of gender discrimination in my working career to date, when

several years ago two male colleagues left the organization I was working with,

rather than report in to a woman boss-me!" Dhawan is a mascot for all the

women in the IT industry where the proportion still remains at a dismal low of

around 18%.