This post is based on an interview with Chitra Sivanandam, VP of Analytics and Simulation at SAIC. It is part of our series of interviews of OODA Network members. Our objective with these interviews is to provide actionable information of interest to the community, including insights that can help with your own career progression. We also really like highlighting some of the great people that make our continued research and reporting possible.  For the full series see: OODA Expert Network Bio Series.

Career Progression:   Chitra’s parents emigrated from India in the 1960’s.  Her mother was a Doctor and her father was an Engineer.  They had high expectations for Chitra and strongly encouraged her to follow the hard sciences to a successful life.  But Chitra was equally torn between Art and Science.  Much to her parent’s chagrin, she declined a Chemistry Degree from Berkeley and headed to Rochester Institute of Technology to study Photography.   Once there, she discovered an emerging field that sparked her interest and exercised both sides of her brain:  Imaging Science.  Since it was new, the department was small and she could work closely with the Professors and students, many of whom were from the Air Force developing their remote sensing skills.

To her parents continued consternation, upon graduation she took the lowest paying job she was offered – with the Government.  She has never regretted it.  She obtained an early indoctrination to the importance of the operational mission.  She was able to travel a great deal and learned WHY her work was important.  Chitra has taken that lesson throughout her career as she moved between Government and Industry positions.

Chitra recalls trying to develop a network of strong women as mentors.  She would randomly contact people from the Forbes List.  She sent one such email to Ursula Burns, CEO of XEROX.  She was surprised and thrilled when she got a nice reply!  “Figure out where you want to put your voice and say something!  I was never good at being in a box.” Chitra says.

In addition to working full time as a Systems Engineer at Raytheon, Chitra attended the Executive MBA program at Wharton University.  “This was an invaluable experience for me.  I was surrounded by successful and inspirational people that would become my future network.  It sparked by innate curiosity and helped me think out of the box.”

Chitra soon moved to In-Q-Tel, helping the Intelligence and Defense communities find cutting edge technologies by making strategic investments.  Chitra says “I loved spending time with the Companies I was working with.  I learned that if I saw where their technology was needed, I was passionate about supporting it. 99% of the time I could turn it into something constructive.  And that 1%?  A lot of insight can be gained from failures.”

Since leaving In-Q-Tel, Chitra has been working in a variety of efforts, still supporting the Government.  She credits her “mission-centric” attitude as a key enabler.  “You have to REALLY listen to the customer when they tell you what their problems are.  We don’t always do a good job of that in the Technology field; and it’s important.”

Chitra has turned all of her experiences into a life that her parents could be proud of!  In addition to her full-time job, Chitra has helped her husband develop his passion.  They own The Craft of Brewing  and have weathered the Pandemic Lockdown through creative ways to disburse this critical essential commodity.  “COVID -19 has made me appreciate all that we have accomplished, and how much more we CAN accomplish when we give it our all!”

Surprises:  Chitra expected that all the emerging new technologies around communications would prosper in the Government.  She is surprised by how slowly they have encroached on the old standards of email and telephone.  “You can only enable technology to do a small portion of our communications.  At the end of the day, it’s the human dynamic and person-to-person trust that is needed to solve problems.”

Chitra has two young school aged children who are NOT at school, thanks to COVID 19. During the interview I could tell she was multi-tasking: assigning homework assignments, reprimanding misbehaviors, negotiating a few more minutes to finish the call, even making lunch – without a single slip in her train of thought!  “Today’s work-from-home environment is creating all this additional activity.”  Chitra says.  “We are all exerting 1000 percent of our energy, reacting to all the additional vectors that have been created from this new environment.”

Technology threats you are interested in: “I’m concerned about the Global supply chain.  Our inability to manufacture many essential items puts us at risk.  The decisions we make when we purchase something rarely look at the big picture. We are just comparing costs.  We need to better understand WHY the costs are low and make a decision on whether it’s worth the risk.”

Quick Hits:

• Book Recommendation: Ok, here I usually ask the interviewee “What books are you reading right now” and they ALWAYS come back with a super intellectual recommendation of a lengthy tome in an advanced field of their subject area.  I hated to ask this of Chitra, who by now was soothing several whining children in the background.  But I did, and with zero hesitation she replied:   Ordinary People Change the World Books. – Children’s Series.  I love this lady!  She’s a superwoman!  [Note – We’ve conducted an OODAcast with the book series author Brad Meltzer. Watch it here.]
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chitra-sivanandam-073698/