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Lioness Changemakers: Anu Chitrapu

Today’s Lioness Changemaker is Anu Chitrapu. Our friend Jagathi Gururajan interviewed her for us.

Anu Chitrapu is Senior Vice President of Global Procurement at Bank of America. As of June 2020, she is also the president of Boston chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), a membership-based organization that supports innovation and entrepreneurship. Chitrapu has been with TiE Boston for about 20 years, organizing events and getting more and more inspired each day by TiE’s ability to incubate ideas, foster startup growth, and provide employment for thousands of people.

Along with her sister, Chitrapu also cofounded Nyrvaana, a nonprofit in India that seeks to rid landfills of perfectly usable fabric. The organization helps women find financial independence by showing them how to make use of that fabric, creating a variety of products which their online shop sells to support programs.

Jagathi Gururajan is Director of Financial Services Advisory at PricewaterhouseCoopers and founder of FintechWomen, a professional nonprofit organization with a mission to build gender equity in financial technology. She specializes in global operations for high-growth startups and companies and is passionate about diversity and women’s advancement and success.

The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), was founded in 1992 in Silicon Valley by a group of successful entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and senior professionals with roots in the Indus region. Today, the organization has 61 chapters and 15,000 members around the world. TiE Boston is the second largest and second-oldest TiE chapter, second only to the original group, TiE Silicon Valley. Through TiE Boston’s many startup and entrepreneurial programs, Chitrapu and her 50% female board aim to guide women and/or minority founders through the ups and downs of growing a business or nonprofit.

In this interview, she talks with Gururajan about what TiE does for its members and the communities they come from as well as what she’d like to see happen for women entrepreneurs—despite her distaste for that phrase—down the road.

About the author

Innovation Women

Innovation Women is a “visibility” bureau helping entrepreneurial, technical and other innovative women get more visibility for themselves, their careers and their companies. Meanwhile, event managers and the media can use the site to search for female speakers and subject matter experts in order to ensure they are able to offer gender-balanced panels, speaking slates and articles.

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