Some advice for anyone who has a conversation scheduled with Velchamy Sankarlingam, MS ’95: Come caffeinated and well-rested. Keeping up with him, his extraordinary career and his fast-working mind requires a lot. He’s a broad thinker who talks about connecting and changing the world.
Velchamy is president of product and engineering for Zoom Video Communications Inc., a role he took on in July 2020. Let’s return for a moment to those dark, socially isolated days to understand the context in which he operates — and the scale of the challenges he seeks out.
In spring 2020, several years into a successful career at VMware, where he was senior vice president of cloud services development and operations, Velchamy got a call from one of his best friends from their days as Webex colleagues. Zoom CEO Eric S. Yuan was asking if he would join him at the company which, in a matter of weeks in early 2020, underwent an astounding amount of growth in meeting participants.
It was a challenge too good to refuse and was an opportunity to work with Yuan again. Velchamy’s experience and education made him precisely the right person for the job. He combines deep technical chops with management expertise — strategic thinking honed through his time earning a master’s degree in business and policy from Stony Brook University.
Read the full story in the Winter 2024 edition of Stony Brook Magazine.
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