Genius Wong, President, Tata Communications

As president, Global Net­work, Cloud and Data Centre  Services at Tata Com­munications, Genius Wong has her hands full. She is responsible for managing the submarine cable and transmission network, which has one of the largest global internet backbones, and a private network that spans over 190 countries where the firm’s VPN solution is offered. Wong also leads the global network partnership team and engineering function for all the network ser­vices, and oversees the cl­oud infrastructure portfolio. She works across time zones, managing a team dis­per­sed ac­ross Europe, the US and Asia.

Wong, who has over two decades of experience, has spent almost half her professional life with Tata Commu­ni­cations, “front-ending the most exciting and challenging profile in the organisation”. “We carry 47.6 billion minutes of international wholesale voice traffic annually – that’s one in 10 voice calls globally – and over 13,000 PB of data on our internet backbone monthly. This has given me and my team huge scope to innovate and work on new services and solutions. There is never a dull moment here,” she says. One such initiative she is proud of is IZO™. Laun­ched two years ago, this is a cloud enablement platform that provides enterprises with grea­ter predictability, productivity and agility.

A graduate in computer science, Wong also has a master’s in electrical engineering from the University of Wash­in­gton. She has always had a fascination for technology. “The idea of being able to create, change, affect vast portions of our present throu­gh technology has always fascinated me,” she says. “Techno­logy is the most important element in kindling innovation. It gives a chance to build curiosity, challenge the norm and in­n­ovate.” She urges young wo­men to look at technology as a viable career option where they can learn, grow, innovate and build things themselves. “Earlier, there were not as many options as today, where one can learn to code and build a usable website and apps with all kinds of functionalities.” She feels that the gender gap in tech is reducing with companies like Tata Communications encouraging and nurturing women tech experts to become future leaders.

Wong joined Tata Com­m­unications from Pacnet Limi­ted, where she was responsible for product management and development, and the launch of the company’s entire portfolio of products and services for the enterprise and carrier markets. In the past, she has also worked with Wharf T&T and IBM.