Jayshree Ullal, billionaire Indian-American CEO, among richest self-made women in US

Jayshree Ullal is the president and CEO of Arista Networks (Image credit: jullal/Facebook)

Jayshree Ullal, CEO of Arista Networks, is one of only five Indian-Americans on Forbes’ list of America’s richest self-made women. With a net worth of $1.9 billion, Ullal ranks 15th on the list.

Forbes released its eighth annual list of America’s richest self-made women last month. Jayshree Ullal is the richest Indian-American on the list, thanks in part to the stock she owns in Arista, the computer networking firm of which she has been president and CEO since 2008.

The 61-year-old owns 5% of Arista's stock, some of which has been set aside for her two children, niece and nephew.

Ullal is also on the board of directors of Snowflake, a cloud computing company that went public in September 2020 and recorded revenue of $2.3 billion the same year.

One of America’s wealthiest female executives, Ullal was born in London and raised in New Delhi, where she studied at the Convent of Jesus & Mary school. She went on to study electrical engineering at San Francisco State University and engineering management at Santa Clara University.

Ulla is not the only Indian-American on the list. At rank 24 is Neerja Sethi with a net worth of $1 billion. Sethi cofounded IT consulting and outsourcing firm Syntel with her husband Bharat Desai in 1980 with an initial investment of just $2,000.

Neha Narkhede, cofounder of cloud company Confluent, is ranked 57th on the list. She has a net worth of $900 million.

At rank 85 is Indra Nooyi, the former chairperson and chief executive officer of PepsiCo, with a net worth of $320 million.

Finally, Reshma Shetty is the last Indian-American on Forbes’ list of America’s richest self-made women. The 41-year-old cofounder of Gingko Bioworks has a net worth of $220 million.