Shalini Kapoor

Shalini Kapoor, Chief Strategist- Data & AI, at the EkStep Foundation, is an innovator and technology strategist with over 28 years of experience in applying future technologies to create new product offerings and solutions in AI, IoT and Cloud. Shalini focuses on mechanisms which ease frictions for population-scale AI adoption in India. Shalini believes that transformation should be people-centric, use case driven and technology should ‘solve for’ societal needs. Previously, as President, AWS Public Sector India, she led Cloud initiatives and go-to-market strategies while leading sales, partner, architects, deep tech specialists, and marketing teams. Shalini has spent 22 years with IBM and was the first IBM Fellow from India. As Vice President, she led the AI research and engineering teams across Data & AI, Watson IoT, AI Applications, supply chain, asset management, climate risk and sustainability. During her tenure at IBM, she championed large-scale social impact initiatives including implementing AI Curriculum for CBSE schools Grade 11 & 12 (deployed at 200 schools across multiple states) and leading the STEM for girls program that reached 200,000 girl students across 12 states and 120 districts. She also created Watson IoT labs in India & Brazil and led the core strategy of launching IBM Kochi and Ahmedabad lab centres. She serves as Independent Director on the board of Titan Company Ltd., Tata Engineering & Automation Ltd., and IIIT Sri City. With 15 patents and 4 IEEE papers, she frequently contributes to industry, academia, technology forums and industry bodies. She is author of the book “AI for You – The new game changer”, published by Bloomsbury.