IT’s paradox: many women in workforce, few rainmakers

The IT sector’s biggest dealmakers have historically emerged from a predominantly male cohort. Even as women account for a significant share of the workforce across large IT services firms, far fewer have traditionally occupied roles that drive multi-million- and billion-dollar deals, underscoring a long-standing gap between representation and influence. Though still a small club, a handful of women leaders are beginning to reshape that narrative, emerging as key rainmakers behind some of the sector’s largest deals.Arundhati Chakraborty, chief executive of Accenture Operations, took charge of a business generating about $10 billion in revenue two years ago. She leads a global workforce of more than 220,000 professionals and oversees large-scale transformation programmes for global enterprises.Among Indian IT firms, TCS has seen a few homegrown women leaders rise through the ranks and influence strategic decisions. Uma Rijhwani, SVP and business unit head - banking financial services and insurance, oversees the unit’s P&L, managing sales, client relationships, delivery and operations across key accounts in the region.Aarthi Subramanian, the company’s COO, also played a key role in TCS’s $700-million all-cash acquisition of Salesforce consulting firm Coastal Cloud. A decade earlier, Farzana Haque oversaw a book of business exceeding $1 billion as global head of strategic group accounts at TCS. She is no longer with the firm.According to Ramkumar Ramamoorthy, partner at Catalincs, the sector’s gender paradox lies in the gap between representation and influence. “While the industry prides itself on having 35–40% women in the workforce and some of the most accomplished women leaders on its boards, it could have done a much better job of creating women rainmakers and dealmakers,” he said. “While there is no dearth of high-potential leaders, the lack of visible role models has been a limitation that needs to be addressed at multiple levels.”Some multinational firms have also begun placing more women in influential operational roles. At Capgemini, Karine Brunet became chief operations and delivery officer in January and joined the group’s executive board, after previously leading the company’s Cloud Infrastructure Services business and building a track record in large-scale infrastructure and transformation programmes.At Cognizant, Shveta Arora, global head of consulting, has been making key moves, including helping stitch together the Pearson deal last year. Mariesa Coughanour, head of advisory and North American delivery & Mindshare, Cognizant Automation and Agentic AI, was a key dealmaker in the company’s partnership with Pacific Gas and Electric Company, sources told TOI. Meanwhile, Riju Vashisht, chief growth officer at Genpact, leads transformation services and enterprise sales.Leaders such as Melissa Taylor, vice chair for clients and markets at KPMG US, and Katie Stein, chief executive of IGT Solutions, are among others helping drive major strategic deals and partnerships.Industry analysts say the imbalance could become even more pronounced as the IT services industry moves into the AI era. Phil Fersht, CEO of HfS Research, noted that many roles most exposed to AI transformation — operations, customer experience and programme management — already have a high proportion of women.“Yet the leadership tables shaping AI strategy are still overwhelmingly male. The IT services industry has thousands of brilliant women across delivery, operations and client leadership. The real question is why so few of them end up running the firms,” he said.