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Vijay Pendakur
Vice President - Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion - VMWare
Vijay Pendakur, Ph.D. is a multifaceted professional with extensive experience in organizational leadership, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and higher education. He served as the Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at VMware from June 2022 to December 2022.1
Professional Experience
Corporate Leadership: Dr. Pendakur has held several high-level positions in major tech companies:
- At VMware, he reported directly to the Chief People Officer with a dotted line to the CEO, advising leadership on enterprise DEI strategy for 38,000 employees across 62 countries.1
- Prior to VMware, he was the Vice President of Zynga Inclusion, Talent, and Engagement from September 2020 to June 2022.1
- He has also worked at Dropbox, though the specific role is not mentioned in the provided information.
Higher Education: Dr. Pendakur has a strong background in higher education:
- He served as the Robert W. and Elizabeth C. Staley Dean of Students at Cornell University, where he was also named Presidential Advisor for Diversity and Equity.1
- At California State University - Fullerton, he held the position of Associate Vice President for Student Success, leading enterprise retention and graduation efforts.1
Expertise and Recognition
Dr. Pendakur is recognized for his expertise in:
- Organizational strategy consulting
- Talent and culture ecosystems
- Enterprise graduation strategy for higher education
- Keynote speaking
- Executive coaching
He has been acknowledged as a top DEI leader by Channel Futures in 2021 and Untapped in 2022.1
Current Roles
As of October 2024, Dr. Pendakur holds the following positions:
- Senior Strategist at Salesforce, focusing on scaling human-centered design and agile methodology in DEI (since September 2023).1
- Founder and Principal of Vijay Pendakur Consulting, LLC (since August 2023).1
Dr. Pendakur is based in the Austin, Texas Metropolitan Area and continues to be active in speaking engagements and professional development activities.123
Highlights
TLDR: USC just "shouted down" one of its own students, before she even had a chance to speak.
I spent nearly 4 years designing and managing the campus free speech strategy at the largest Ivy League University. USC’s recent decision to cancel their own valedictorian’s speech is a complete failure of process and values.
To understand the depth of USC’s disaster, let me take you back and explain some recent history in case you are watching this moment as a bystander.
In the early 2010s, conservative think tanks and funding groups started funneling large amounts of money into student organizations on college campuses, to help them pay the enormous speaker fees of a group of speakers that used provocation, extreme right-wing views, and crowd-baiting to test campus speech policies. Let’s be clear: the endgame here was to create moments where “speakers were shouted down” so campuses could be accused of being anti-free speech. How did many campuses respond? Most invested in elaborate plans and funding pools to preserve speech.
Here's what we did at my institution: I worked across campus with numerous leaders, lawyers, the campus police, the media team, and student organizations to establish a set of procedures. The point of this exhaustive work was to try our hardest to preserve free speech, as long as all the event management rules were followed by the students.
As part of this effort, me and my team had to stand on stage and remind large crowds of what the policies were, before certain speakers began their keynotes. I vividly remember standing in front of nearly a thousand campus community members and protecting the free speech of individuals whom I disagree with in every part of my heart and mind. And I’d do it again.
The consensus at that time, across most of higher education, was that a plurality ideas, even ones that many found repugnant, was essential to a well-rounded, world-ready education. Furthermore, limiting speech, based on perceived content, is a slippery slope into the hellscape of censorship and most organizations didn’t want to touch that third rail.
USC is the kind of institution, with its profile, money, and resources to have built out the same kinds of elaborate tactics that my institution did to preserve free speech on campus. They would have been tested in the pre-pandemic years, with numerous campus speakers that came specifically with the hopes of getting “shouted down” and USC would have had a deep well of resources in place to prevent this.
When viewed through this context, USC’s decision to cancel THEIR OWN valedictorian’s commencement speaker due to “safety concerns,” is chilling to me. We, as a community of educators and university leaders, worked too hard in the mid-teens to prevent exactly this. USC just shouted down one of its own students, before she even had a chance to speak.
Read more here:
At AFROTECH , we hosted our “How We Built This” panel, featuring a discussion of Black Dropboxer experiences, diversity and inclusion within Dropbox culture, and the impact on work products. The panelists included @RiAnca Allen-Jones (Digital Producer Manager), @Zyanne Clay-Hubbard (iOS Engineer), Atiba Booker (Data Scientist) and Zubair Lawrence, moderated by Briahna Gatlin of Swank Public Relations.
Watch the recording below!
#LifeInsideDropbox #AfroTech2022
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Mesh offers several powerful features including:
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Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
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Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
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