WITI Awards

In recognition of the importance of Bio-Tech, WITI is pleased to announce our first 2020 awards to the following winners from this week's featured company, Gilead Sciences, Inc:

Female Champion: Stephanie Price-David
- Led the listening session for Inclusion and Diversity Listening Forum as part of the Black Lives Matter movement
- A champion for female employees and a big supporter of Women In Technology and Women at Gilead (W@G)
- Goes over and beyond to support, mentor and champion women
- GLOBE (an Employee Resource Group for African Americans) Partner

Diversity and Inclusion Champion: Ritu Shrivastav
- Organized and led the Fireside chat with a global champion of women in tech
- A strong and influential voice in IT for diversity and inclusion
- Speaker and influencer for Inclusion and Diversity at WITI
- A strong voice in Bay area for Inclusion and Diversity

Male Ally: Ashok Kumar Padmaraju
- Founder of the Gilead Women's cricket club
- Positive and very collaborative
- A big supporter and champion for women


Stephanie Price-David
Senior IT Director Quality & Compliance
Gilead Sciences

Stephanie joined Gilead in April 2019. She is responsible for driving IT Quality & Compliance direction and ensuring Quality Management System (QMS) principles and components are aligned across the IT landscape.

Before joining Gilead, Stephanie was the Senior IT Director & Global Quality Compliance Head for Merial-Sanofi (later merged with Boehringer Ingelheim). During her 11-year tenure, she was a member of the IT Leadership team, where she led the IT Quality Management System (QMS) strategy. Stephanie used her strong leadership and collaborative skills to drive and align QMS frameworks, methodologies, and processes among IT and functional business teams. She also led global strategic initiatives in software engineering, Computer System Validation (CSV), testing, audit readiness, and disaster recovery planning and execution. Also, while at Merial-Sanofi, she was an Elevate member, which focused on mentoring and sponsorship for women.

Before Merial-Sanofi, Stephanie worked 11 years for Johnson & Johnson (J&J) in various roles of increasing responsibility. The last position was Director of Global Quality & Compliance as IT Owner of GXP Systems and infrastructure. During this time, she was responsible for the SAP validation strategy, which was implemented worldwide to enable finance, supply chain, and manufacturing processes. While at J&J, she also established the IT College Hire Program, which focused on recruiting and attracting a diverse slate of graduates to IT organizations; the program was recognized and adopted among other J&J operating companies.

Stephanie is a graduate of Wilmington College of Ohio with a degree in Business Administration & Marketing. She also was nominated and completed Smith College Women's Executive Leadership Program while at Johnson & Johnson. You can find her enjoying artistic endeavors with her family or as a weekend warrior on the tennis court in her spare time.

Ritu Shrivastav
Senior Director HR
Gilead Sciences

An innovative and impact driven Global Human Resources leader who drives business through collaborative leadership to shape high-performing organizations, aligning HR initiatives to strategic business outcomes. Apart from being a trusted advisor and dynamic business leader, Ritu also wears the hat of being an ambassador of Inclusion. She leads a multi-national HR team with strong focus on business results with a keen vision in aligning talent and integrated thought leadership skills.

Compassion and strongly belief that diversity drives inclusion and equity inspire passion for her craft and work.

Being an ambassador of Inclusion, Ritu spearheads Women in IT initiatives and is an active contributor towards various ERGs at Gilead like Women@Gilead, GLOBE (Gilead Leadership Organization of Black Employees), Pride Alliance etc. She is also part of the strategic team which aims at operationalizing I&D across all functions (Hiring, Talent Management, learning etc.). She leads the Diversity Action Plan at Gilead which focuses on making Gilead a diverse workplace where everyone feels included.

Ritu is an eminent speaker with ability to deeply influence and strong articulation skills, with effortlessly engaging the audience through her phenomenal storytelling capabilities. She has been actively participating in HR conclaves, HR forums, HR Conferences in the capacity of a Leader.

Ritu, is a committed and dedicated philanthropist who believes in giving back; �"Help people help themselves” is her ideology! She is one of the lead members of AnitaB.Org Giving Circle to help women succeed in technology. Her strong belief in investing in knowledge urged her to lead NextGen Cybersecurity (Non-profit organization) which aims to provide sponsorship /training for young graduates on Cyber Technology and help them with right jobs. She is also one of the driving forces and a lead member of Navanit Foundation, which works for the betterment of under privileged youth in India.

Ashok Kumar Padmaraju
Senior Technical Manager
Gilead Sciences

Ashok has more than 15 years of IT experience in both Health care and technology companies and is part of the IT-WIO-Storage team. In his spare time, he enjoys hanging out with colleagues, family and friends, eating out, and playing cricket.

He is a strong believer that Inclusion and diversity is the only way for success for any organization. He always supports women equality, empowerment and success in the organization. On that note, he laid an example by supporting his colleague to apply for Manager position and for the last 2 years he has been a pillar of support for her and for the success of the team.

As part of Gilead Cricket Community, he initiated a new chapter for women and encouraged them to join the sport and set up goals for a healthy lifestyle with improved endurance, stamina, balance, and hand-eye coordination. Not only that, but it also promotes inclusion and diversity, that aligns with our Gilead Core values.

Opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of WITI.