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Celebrating International Women’s Day with Three Leaders at Hughes

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International Women's Day

In an industry still largely dominated by men, the women at Hughes make their impact felt in spades. After almost two years of virtual events, a recent Hughes Women’s Impact Network breakfast brought together colleagues from all over the world for a morning of networking, connecting and reflecting on shared industry experiences. In celebration of International Women’s Day, here we highlight three female Hughes executives and their contributions to our business.

Archana Gharpuray, Vice President, Engineering

Archana is closing in on 32 years with Hughes, working her way up from a software engineer and steadily taking on more responsibilities to get to her current position where she leads the software development teams for the Hughes JUPITER satellite ground system. Part of the reason she has stayed so long is because of the talented group of creative professionals she gets to work with every day. Hughes is committed to pioneering technological and engineering advancements, demonstrated through annual Engineering Technology Days where employees from different departments are encouraged to share their work. Archana looks forward to connecting with students every summer and developing the next generation of software engineers as part of managing the Hughes internship program. Her advice for young professionals is to always take your seat at the table (whether figuratively or literally as we embark on more in person meetings again!) and make your voice heard.

Colleen Caruso, Vice President, Sales Engineering & Operations

With over 25 years of experience solving the complex technical, operational, and financial needs of distributed enterprises, Colleen has built her career mentoring young professionals along the way and encouraging their growth and leadership. In her role leading the sales engineering and sales operations teams for the Hughes North American Enterprise business, she helps advise clients how Hughes Managed Services can best solve their business challenges and how to best connect technologies, solutions, their locations and their people. She attributes the fact that Hughes has continued to adapt to new technology and expand our solution portfolios as critical to maintaining its market leader status – even after more than 50 years in business! She encourages young professionals to challenge the status quo – being a leader requires courage and the ability to engage in disruptive thinking to facilitate change.

Seema Shankar, Director, IT Applications

Another long-tenured Hughes employee, Seema has been with the company nearly 20 years, starting as a junior programmer and growing her responsibilities first as an individual contributor and then as a team leader, manager and now a director. In her current role, she supports a wide range of business groups, including Engineering, Operations, Legal, Sales and Distribution. She credits much of her growth to the opportunities she was given to learn and take ownership of projects, including leading a recent implementation to upgrade the SAP ERP system – which came in both under budget and on time. An active leader of the Women’s Impact Network, she helped facilitate a mentoring initiative to connect female professionals across the company. She urges junior employees to seek out additional responsibilities if they are not presented with them.

 

Here at Hughes, we’re always on the lookout for the next generation of female employees to make their mark in engineering, sales, marketing, operations, finance and more. Ready to join the team? Check out our list of open positions here: https://echostar.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/echostar