To celebrate AAPI Heritage Month, we are featuring Women of Color STEM Award winners who honor their heritage. Gandhi Sivakumar, a Distinguished Engineer at IBM Australia, is one of these remarkable women. Over the past twenty years, she has led transformation at Watson Solutions and the Asia Pacific.

Gandhi has filed over 135 patents with IBM and has received internal and external awards for outstanding technical innovation," Evans added.

She graduated with a bachelor's degree in electronics and communications engineering from the National Institute of Technology in Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu, India in 1990. She later received a master's degree in software systems at the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in Pilani. Gandhi was also a core member of the team that developed the Network Management Standards for the Telecom Commission of India.

Gandhi is an advocate of mentoring and serves as a mentor to university students, women, and junior practitioners. She has also served as a board member of the Australian Computer Society.

In an interview for Women of Color magazine, Gandhi shared her childhood memories of collecting fused tungsten filament bulbs instead of Barbie dolls. She would remove the filament to try to make a lens out of it by pouring water and performing scientific experiments.

"Inspired by Einstein’s theories and then Newton, my soul day and night would seek out the unknown in our technical world," she said. "My ongoing journey to further goals is far off, and I will continue to march beyond the boundaries of gender, age, stage, location, and time."

The Women of Color STEM Awards Conference recognizes outstanding women in STEM and offers fantastic opportunities for professional development, networking, and recruiting.