Rising Women of Influence

This GSA Rising Women of Influence Award recognizes and profiles this next generation of women leaders in the semiconductor industry.  The inaugural award was presented at the GSA Annual Awards Dinner in 2018 and will be presented each year.

Vanitha Kumar is a Vice President of Software Engineering at Qualcomm Technologies Incorporated. Vanitha holds a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Northeastern University, and a Bachelor of Electronics & Communication Engineering degree from PSG College of Technology, India. Vanitha has 20 years of experience in the wireless telecommunications industry and in embedded software architecture, design, and development. She has also contributed actively to cellular technology standards. In her current role, Vanitha leads the modem SW air interface technology including 5G, 4G-LTE, and Cellular IoT across multiple global locations. She also has vast experience leading multiple generations of Qualcomm chipsets and working closely with customers, vendors and cellular carriers to enable the launch of many devices. She has about 132 granted patents in the US & abroad.

Vanitha is passionate about the role of women in science and technology. She is on the board of Qualcomm Foundation in charge of Corporate Giving. She is also on the board of Elementary Institute of Science which is a non-profit organization that focuses on developing exposure and interest in STEM careers among young children. Vanitha also coaches science Olympiad, Math and Robotics teams at her daughter’s school.

Ching-Wen Cho, Account Director, is responsible for driving multi-billion dollar business in TSMC revenue and enabling strong customer revenue growth (and as a consequence TSMC’s) across a broad range of IDM, Fabless and Emerging Account engagements. Her key roles include setting business strategy and leading operational plan execution to maximize both customer satisfaction and TSMC revenue. She actively leads one of TSMC’s largest customer engagements. Ching-Wen is a rising star and is on track to be a VP.

Ching-Wen’s career has spanned more than 23 years at TSMC. Starting as one of the first female process engineers in TSMC’s fabs, her technical capabilities and leadership qualities were recognized early on and she quickly rose from Module Engineering to a preeminent position as Integration Engineering manager. In that role, she led a group of engineers working on leading edge non-volatile memory processes.

As an Integration Engineering manager, Ching-Wen took the opportunity to work directly with customers and inserted herself in solving their problems. She received very strong positive customer feedback on these interactions. Having experienced this unique demonstration of problem-solving skills, Ching-Wen was heavily recruited by the business teams. Her technical abilities and a can-do attitude have had her quickly moving up management ranks within the business teams. Under her leadership, her team has delivered almost 9X organic revenue growth to TSMC. Ching-Wen is a recipient of the Dr. Morris Chang TSMC Innovation and Customer Partnership Award for delivering strong business results. This award is distinguished, coveted and very hard to come by.

Ching-Wen earned BS and MS degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from one of Taiwan’s Top Universities, Cheng-Kung University. From an early age, she has been driven to achieve as demonstrated by attendance at Taichung’s Girls Senior High School, where attendance is gated by a highly competitive entrance examination.

She has had a distinguished technical career and her work has been recognized through technical paper presentations at Global Conferences. She has been awarded 10 US patents.

Christine Dunbar is the Vice President of the RF Business Unit at GLOBALFOUNDRIES, where she leads an organization responsible for growing and supporting a global business focused on servicing RF (Radio Frequency) needs for next generation of consumer and enterprise communications. Christine received her Bachelor’s Degree in Materials Science & Engineering from Cornell University in 1996.

Christine joined GLOBALFOUNDRIES in July 2015, when the IBM Microelectronics Division was acquired by GLOBALFOUNDRIES. Christine joined IBM Microelectronics in 1996 in Essex Junction, VT.

She has held various technical engineering, management and executive positions throughout her career spanning across many organizations – including leadership roles in Semiconductor Manufacturing Operations, Quality, & Characterization. In 2007, she was appointed Director of IBM Photomask Technology & Operations and served as executive sponsor of IBM’s Joint Photomask Development Alliance with Toppan Printing of Japan. From 2012 until the GLOBALFOUNDRIES acquisition, Christine was the Director of the IBM Specialty Foundry Business Unit.

Christine is also active in her community and in causes important to her. She is a founding member of the Leadership Now Project, a group of business leaders committed to supporting change leadership in US Government. Christine also serves on the Board of Directors at the Boys and Girls Club of Burlington, Vermont and at Wake Robin, a non-profit Continuing Care Retirement Community (CCRC), in Shelburne, Vermont She lives in Shelburne, Vermont USA with her 2 middle school aged children.

Congratulations to Sandra Rivera for being named Chief People Officer and Executive VP: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190611005761/en

Sandra L. Rivera is senior vice president and general manager of the network platforms group at Intel Corporation. She is responsible for the Intel business group charged with providing innovative technology and solutions to the networking industry. She is also Intel’s 5G executive sponsor and is responsible for guiding Intel’s strategy, commitments, and deliverables for 5G.

Rivera leads a global organization of over 2500 employees to drive the transformation of network infrastructure to Intel-based solutions. This is one of the Data Center Group’s fastest-growing businesses, enabling Intel to become a market leader for network logic silicon, an annual $20B market segment.

Rivera joined Intel in 2000 as a marketing director after the acquisition of Dialogic Corporation. Before joining Intel, Rivera co-founded and served as president of The CTI Authority, and served as president of the computer telephony division at Catalyst Telecom.
Rivera holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Pennsylvania State University. She sits on the governing board of the Linux Foundation Networking project and is a member of the Intel Hispanic Leadership Council.