“I never believed in having lunch alone.” This strong theme characterizes Mamatha Charmarthi’s entire life. She consistently takes everyone with her on a mutual journey – be it the neighbourhood kids of her childhood in Hyderabad or her team at ZF.
Born in 1969, this grey-eyed bright lady is deeply influenced by her parents, especially her entrepreneurial mother.
“My mother opened a day care centre in the 1970s, when there probably were none. At one point, we had about 350 kids and my mother extended the day care centre to be a school because she realised that the kids needed motherly love in the absence of their own mothers, in addition to education. By the time my sister and I were 13 and 11, we had started teaching the kids,” Ms. Mamatha says.
This shy and introverted kid blossomed working with younger children: “I was their leader because I would play and dance with them while teaching.”
The joy remains part of her personality now. She ensures that her professional team is having fun, too, while working hard.
Academically Ms. Mamatha was very bright, and earned a government scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in English at Osmania University, Hyderabad, in 1988.
She met her life partner, though unaware who he would be, when she was merely seven and he was 13. “In 1990, at 21, I finished my post-graduation and got married. He basically wore my parents down until they agreed,” she laughs.
After marriage, Ms. Mamatha started teaching English to undergraduates, but her husband pushed her to work on leadership skills. “In 1993, I worked with a market research company in Tirupati where I had introduced a computer with the Lotus 123 program. I built the first Oracle backend server with Visual Basic and Crystal Reports front end and showed my boss the power of technology. That’s where my interest in IT began.”
A tough lady, Ms. Mamatha scored top grades in the final exams of her master’s degree in computer science barely two days after the delivery of her first son. That same year, she realised her ‘dream of working in the Chrysler building’ when she joined that corporation as a contractor.
“I gave my interview with my crying baby son in my lap. I got the job of Lotus Notes programmer and went to teach their employees, since Chrysler was going through tough financial times, and the training budget was practically non-existent. Later on, I worked on the integration of the two automotive giants as a project manager,” she says with a smile.
During her work there, she met her lifelong mentor, Ms. Susan J Unger, then Senior VP & Chief Information Officer at Daimler Chrysler – another lady of mettle, who was one of only three women working in the company’s top management at that time. Even though heavily pregnant with her second son, Ms. Mamatha finished the integrated web presence for the newly-merged company and received a standing ovation from Ms. Susan.
In 2014, Ms. Mamatha “joined TRW as their global CIO. Soon, when ZF bought TRW, again I began working on the merger of the two companies,” she adds.
During her high-profile career, Ms. Mamatha has embraced diversity, and its importance to strengthening corporations and the worldwide economy. On the positive side, among other honours, she was given a ‘Woman of Colour in Technology’ award. But there have been tough situations, too. As examples, in her early career, a superior asked about her husband’s ‘comfort level’ about her decision to move to another country for work. In another instance, she was asked if an older Indian gentleman who reported to her was comfortable in doing so. For certain colleagues, her professional answers caused her to be labelled as ‘arrogant’. But her mentor, Ms. Susan, helped her adjust and learn to rise above unimportant incidents like that to celebrate becoming a well-rounded leader, and mentoring other diverse leaders, along the way.
Ms. Mamatha reveals proudly: “I work with both my head and my heart and I am a technology professional who delivers results.” It was put to the test when she set up the ZF Development Centre in India in eight short months and, simultaneously, ensured that the community received the donation of three vans of food for the underprivileged on the launch day in March 2017.
Given her own experience, and beliefs, to ‘succeed’ is as important to Ms. Mamatha Chamarthi as never having lunch alone. She is a lifelong believer in both.