Sukumar Rajagopal, 2014 Honoree

- Title
- Senior vice president, CIO, head of innovation
- Employer
- Cognizant Technology Solutions
- Location
- Chennai, Tamilnadu
- How have you incorporated social media into your own work?
- I have been blogging since June 2004. We rolled out blogging inside Cognizant in July 2006, and it's quite popular -- and even our CEO blogs regularly. I am a passionate advocate of social media. I joined Twitter in 2007, which has helped me tremendously with my social footprint and improved my effectiveness by giving me the opportunity to spot trends very early.
- Skills you'll hire for this year:
- Design thinking skills are becoming very critical for us given our development approach. We have formed a design community of excellence within IT led by one of our best design thinkers, Sanjay Radhakrishnan, a senior director who is also my direct report.
- A career surprise:
- That I couldn't speak one full sentence in English when I started working and am now a public-speaking enthusiast who can engage a 1,000-person audience for an hour or more.