Rajashree Rao

Rajashree (Shree) is a globally acclaimed Industry Thought leader, visionary, advisor, principal consultant, and mentor in next-gen technologies – Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Computing, Data Analytics, Robotics, Industry 4.0, Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, and Smart Cities/Nation across industry verticals. After working for 20 years in the corporate across the regions (India, US, and APAC), she is back to her roots to venture onto the next biggest growth market in the world. Shree brings with her the diverse industry experience of working with IBM, Intel, and SAP, leading and influencing the technology adoption within the Singapore Government and Public Sector for building the Smart City and Smart Nation Initiatives in the APAC region. Shree has been recognized by Thinker’s 360 as one of the Top 50 Global Thought leaders and Influencers in Emerging Technologies, AI, Blockchain, Cloud Computing, Ecosystem, 5G, AR/VR, and IoT. Shree is featured in the 3AI list of AI & Analytics leaders to watch out for in 2021. Thinkers260 has also recognized Shree as one of the Top 100 Women B2B Global Thought Leaders to follow in 2020 and 2021. Recognized by SheThePeople.TV 40 Over 40 Awards – A celebration of achievement and courage, of grit and determination of Shree’s career journey in the corporate world.

Shree brings in the blend of rich expertise in Marcomm, Sales, Business Development, Large Enterprise Account Management for Industry Verticals, Channel Partner/Program Management, Product/Solutions management and ISVs/IoT start-up ecosystem development driving Influencer Sales in emerging technologies. Shree is a passionate technologist who challenges the industry and technology providers to innovate and think out of the box since she believes that Technology’s principal goal is to enable an individual, organization, city, or a nation to retrofit their existing system/business model/solutions/infrastructure, which will empower and transform the way people live, and work in the era of digital transformation. Shree has developed an innovation strategy for restructuring and reconstructing existing business models. Shree also holds various awards for having built trusted Business Partner relationships. She is an enthusiastic and fervent Speaker and Writer in the Next-Gen Technologies, Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Life-lessons, Motivation, and Self. Shree is a radical who is known for breaking the glass ceiling in her professional and personal life to evolve into who truly she wants to be.

In her current role as the head of AI Innovation Hub and Partnerships and Ecosystem (APAC) for R2 Data Labs at Rolls-Royce (RR), Shree has established strong Partnerships across Industry Players – Academia, Corporates, Governments, Industry bodies, Incubators, Accelerators, VCs for identifying the creme-de-la-creme ecosystem partners to solve the business pain-points which is scalable for various Industry segments. Her focus is to Optimize/Vitalise and augment our existing cutting-edge technology capabilities to innovate with the diverse ecosystem initiatives of Co-Creation/Co-Innovation and Co-funding engagement models for efficiently addressing the problems instead of reinventing the wheel. Shree is the catalyst within the businesses to understand and translate the real-time challenges and align the ecosystem to the business goals for shaping the future through data-led innovation. This has helped the ecosystem to accelerate the goal of faster turn-around time to deliver value and impact to the business/customers. As a Digital and Innovative Ecosystem leader, Shree has played an integral role by helping the business and the company in their journey of ‘Digital Transformation.’ Shree leads the R2DL to be the pioneers in powering the ecosystem capabilities for leading ahead of our competition. Established “Ecosystem Team” as the Trusted business advisors both to the internal and external business stakeholders globally and has been known as the Pioneers in the Open Innovation Partnership Model. Shree champions the Strategy, which she developed called ‘Partnership Innovation Model” which is based on the Open Innovation Framework to drive the innovation within RR.

Shree is a Graduate (Hons.) from Bangalore University in Business Management and has a Computer Science diploma – eCommerce. She enjoys international travel, cooking and is in the constant pursuit of spirituality. She is also passionate about women’s empowerment and spends her free time working with women and women’s organizations.

She is the Hon. Global Director General, SDGs Global Impact Startups, GCPIT