Ep 61: Mamatha Chamarthi: Change Agent Who “Never Has Lunch Alone”

Diva Tech Talk Podcast

Diva Tech Talk hosted Mamatha Chamarthi, SVP, and Chief Digital Officer for ZF Group Inc. (www.zf.com) a worldwide automotive leader, employing 137,000 people in 40 countries, with annual revenue of $43 billion. Mamatha drives ZF’s digitalization strategy and emergent technologies to transform business models. Her robust career spans more than two decades beginning in India, where she received her degree in Psychology, Sociology and English, and a masters’ degree in English. “I got married to my childhood best friend,” she said, moving to Bangalore, where she taught English to undergraduate Indian students. She needed “a more dynamic mission,” and entered Sri Venkateswara University for a second master’s in marketing, with a minor in information systems.

Mamatha moved to Michigan where her husband landed his “dream job” at Ford Motor Company (www.ford.com). “I enrolled at Wayne State University for a master’s in computer science” and accepted a job as a consultant at Chrysler, now Fiat Chrysler (www.fcagroup.com). “That first interview was a phone interview. My 3-month-old baby started crying 10 minutes into the interview! The woman interviewer said: ‘I totally understand; just go take care of the baby first.’ That was my first lesson: being a woman, you should be empathetic to other women.”

Mamatha began her Chrysler career as a consultant and “what started as a small client/server application for tracking tax incentive turned into a paperless office for government affairs.” Mamatha’s insistence on understanding the full breadth of business, not just tech requirements, has been a hallmark of her career, ever since. She went on to support public relations, and rolled out a global employee Intranet as well as media sites for PR releases and press kits. Joining as a fulltime employee, as Daimler and Chrysler merged, Mamatha was part of the post-merger integration team. “No one was looking at a standardized approach to Web technologies,” so she decided to lead the charge. She put together a business plan to streamline efforts, while inaugurating a major internal tech evolution. “I went around the world, selling the business plan” to Daimler Chrysler leaders, and “from scratch, I created a $10 million department supporting global Web technologies.” From there, Mamatha worked on reinvigorating a project to develop an optimal production planning system which saved approximately $28 million annually.

Then she “came to the attention of Sue Unger,” (then the CIO for Daimler Chrysler). Meeting initial resistance to getting sponsorship for another masters’ degree, Mamatha boldly wrote a white paper describing what she had done for Daimler Chrysler and why the company should further invest in her. Receiving Sue’s blessing, and full corporate support, Mamatha enrolled for her MBA at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/), emphasizing global business. Mamatha migrated briefly to Daimler Financial Services (the finance arm of the automotive conglomerate), and then was asked to “be the program manager for the separation of Daimler and Chrysler” --- a very sensitive role at a highly disruptive time. Mamatha considered this a valuable formative period for her. “It goes back to empathy,” she said. “There were so many of my colleagues that I was leaving behind in Chrysler. I felt guilty. But it was an exciting opportunity, too. As Charles Dickens would say: ‘It was the best of times; it was the worst of times’…”.

Mamatha worked directly for Daimler until 2010 and then chose to become the first CIO for Consumers Energy (https://www.consumersenergy.com/), a Michigan publicly traded energy company. Her first step was to work with leadership, and ensure that “They understand the world is changing.” Mamatha took the senior management team to Silicon Valley to visit with tech companies and then debrief at IDEO (www.ideo.com), a leading global design company creating positive change. “It was a huge ‘ah ha’ moment for the executive team.” Mamatha considers one of her greatest accomplishments the transformation of the company to a consumer-oriented entity. “Every element of the company was subsequently focused on the customer experience,” she said.

Mamata then moved to CIO at TRW Automotive. Within 5 months of her joining, the company was acquired by ZF. The acquisition completed in January of 2015. In April 2015, she assumed her new role as Chief Digital Officer. Mamatha is passionate about this “because we have a very strong purpose: Vision Zero --- moving to a world of zero accidents and zero emissions.” The ZF mission to save lives is accomplished by providing the best in intelligent mechanical systems. “Most ZF processes are from the industrial age. We need to transform them to the digital age. Also, we need to start opening up to innovation. That’s the challenge.”

In her career, Mamatha’s success-engendering qualities include: a love of continuous learning; bringing integrated strengths to any challenge; courage; the ability to drive change; empathy; and a clear vision. She created and maintains her own personal Board of Directors --- mentors who have guided her, and strong sponsors along the way.

Mamatha’s key advice for other women aspiring to lead include: be bold, grasp opportunities, don’t think you need to meet every facet of a position in which you are interested, and ensure you have a healthy network. She also says: “Give back. Give back as much as you can.” When meeting challenges: “Believe in yourself. Be comfortable in your shoes. If I set expectations of how I should be treated, then people will automatically treat me that way.” And her final note to our audience? “Never have lunch alone.”

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