Chaitra Vedullapalli saw women missing out on opportunities in the tech industry, so she decided to do something about it. Photo courtesy Women in Cloud
Chaitra Vedullapalli is the force behind a new book and initiative called OPULIS, which celebrates 50 women who worked or still work at Microsoft, and the roles they had in shaping the company’s success. The book was endorsed by Microsoft and the Microsoft Alumni Network, and sales are supporting AI training scholarships for the next generation of underrepresented tech leaders. We sat down with Chaitra to hear more about the initiative, as well as the organization she started, Women in Cloud, all aimed at elevating women’s visibility in the technology industry.
What prompted you to launch Women in Cloud and why did you decide to work on the OPULIS book? Women in Cloud was born from a very real observation that access — not talent — was the missing link for many women in technology. I saw brilliant innovators struggling to scale their ideas because they couldn’t access enterprise customers, funding, or cloud marketplaces. That’s when I knew we had to design a system that democratized access to economic opportunity. When Microsoft became the foundation sponsor of Women in Cloud, it gave us a platform to build that vision at scale. Over time, we created pathways for thousands of women to skill up, co-sell, and launch sustainable businesses.
OPULIS came as a natural evolution of that mission, a tribute to the women and allies who built the systems, culture, and community that made Microsoft’s trillion-dollar transformation possible. It’s both a historical archive and a leadership accelerator, capturing the frameworks and “cheat codes” that future generations can use to build their own legacies.
What work still needs to be done to support women’s leadership in tech? The next frontier isn’t just about participation, it's about economic mobility and value creation. We need to ensure that women not only contribute to the tech economy but also capture economic return, build equity, and lead innovation within it. That’s why we launched the book-to-scholarship model through OPULIS: Women Powering Microsoft’s Trillion-Dollar Shift. Every 10 books purchased funds a Microsoft AI Innovator Certification Scholarship, helping women gain advanced AI skills, mentorship, and access to communities that enable economically stable, purpose-driven careers. It’s one way we’re ensuring women don’t just observe the AI revolution — they architect and accelerate it. We must also preserve women’s stories and frameworks, because visibility shapes opportunity. When young women can see leadership that looks like them, they begin to believe it’s possible.
Where do you see the biggest opportunities in AI moving forward? Policy is catching up, but not fast enough. The challenge is that AI evolves exponentially, while policy evolves linearly. You know, I always come back to that line from Spiderman:
“With great power comes great responsibility.” That’s exactly where we are with AI. We’re witnessing the democratization of intelligence and whoever understands or controls intelligent data now holds the power to predict, detect, mobilize, and implement outcomes faster than ever before.
This shift forces us to ask hard questions: Who’s being protected? Who’s being included? And who’s quietly being left behind? If we want AI to serve everyone, not just a privileged few, we need to ground its growth in four essential pillars:
Consumer Protection – AI must protect people’s privacy, identity, and trust — not exploit them.
Economic Access – It must create pathways to jobs, entrepreneurship, and financial mobility, especially for communities historically excluded from the tech economy.
Civil Rights – We must design and govern AI systems that reduce bias, promote fairness, and preserve human dignity.
Automation for Productivity – Let AI handle repetitive tasks so people can focus on what makes us uniquely human — creativity, empathy, and innovation.
The real power of AI isn’t in the algorithms it’s in how we use them to protect people, unlock prosperity, and create inclusion at scale. Because in the end, power isn’t about who controls the data. It’s about who benefits from it.
Read other stories from the women featured in the OPULIS book:
