A director of engineering at Google in Redmond, Washington, Jayanthi Sampathkumar ’97 MS ’99 MS developed personal resilience and explored her academic passions as an international graduate student from India.
“I am eternally thankful for the opportunity to study at Ohio State. My four-year experience was life changing and taught me so much. I developed resilience to withstand the cold weather, I learned how to make friends in a new place, and I followed my passions in and out the classroom,” reflects Sampathkumar.
After completing her undergraduate education at the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi, Sampathkumar applied to a master’s program in the Ohio State Department of Materials Science and Engineering based on a recommendation from her classmate Nitta Venkata Surya Narayana, a Buckeye himself. Sampathkumar moved to Ohio in 1995 to pursue her master’s in materials science and engineering.
“Student life at Ohio State was full of learning and fun. I am grateful to the university for supporting my educational goals as well as providing the flexibility to explore my other passions. The Indian student community was so helpful when I came to campus,” Sampathkumar explains.
Outside of her studies, Sampathkumar took a swimming class and joined a student band Sangam where she sang Indian film songs for four years. She also bought a mountain bike and explored the trails along the Olentangy River riding for two hours every evening in the summer months. She still has the 30-year-old bicycle and cherishes the Ohio State memories she made with it. To top off her time in Columbus, Sampathkumar met her husband, Anand Arvind, an alumnus who earned his master’s in mechanical engineering in 1994.
After earning her first master’s degree in 1997, Sampathkumar joined the computer science program at Ohio State and completed a second master’s degree in 1999.
Her career started at Microsoft in the state of Washington as a software engineer in 1999 thanks to a campus recruitment event at Ohio State. After six years, Sampathkumar moved back to India to be a senior development lead in Hyderabad. During her 20-year career at Microsoft she advanced from being an individual contributor software engineer to an engineering leader managing large products and teams. In 2021, Sampathkumar established the Google Cloud Data Analytics team in Hyderabad, India. She was promoted to director of engineering for the data analytics teams in India in 2022. Currently she leads a team that builds automation for data security and operational efficiency of Google data centers in Washington.
Sampathkumar stepped off her bike and laced up a pair of running shoes in 2016. She decided to run a marathon – wearing a sari. Sampathkumar had been wearing a different sari to work every day and then realized she could raise additional awareness for the Indian clothing by running a race in one. By completing the marathon in Hyderabad in 4:57:44 while wearing a sari, Sampathkumar is listed in the 2017 Guinness Book of World Records with the title for Fastest marathon dressed in a sari.
“I’m the first woman to run a full marathon wearing a sari. I also ran two 50Ks, or ultra marathons, wearing a sari, the best one completed in under six hours. I continue to run all events in a sari in order to inspire the women in the local community to take up an active lifestyle and to feel confident wearing saris on a regular basis.”