Ravi Sethi

Ravi was born in 1947, in Murdana, Punjab. There was violence at that time, and when he was on several days old when his father's colleague in the Pakistan Air Force brought him to a safer place in India.

Later, he went to Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK), which provided him with a chance to shine. He and five other students were picked to help the professer teaching one of the first university computer courses ever taught in the country.

He then went on to obtain a Ph.D at Princeton University. In 1969 he got an internship at Bell. He would not get a job there until 1976 after he worked as an assistant professor at Penn State University. For a year in 1979 he left Bell for some more academia at University of Arizona, but then withdrew back to Bell.

While working for Bell Labs he was awarded the "Distinguished Technical Staff award", and was named a "Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery". In 1996 he was named research vice president in charge of computing and mathematical sciences and, additionally, in 1997, chief technical officer for Lucent’s Communications Software Group.

He says that he went to Avaya Labs because he wanted to get the opportunity to grow his own company. While building it he says he picked up human relation skills, too.

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