When Aravind Venkateswaran G’05 arrived at Syracuse University as a computer engineering Master’s student, he was more than seven thousand miles away from his home in India but was immediately at ease in Syracuse. 

“I was an international student and it was a smooth transition. There was no stress for me. The international program office and the faculty were always available to help us” says Venkateswaran. 

Syracuse University’s reputation as a leading academic and research institution had brought Venkateswaran to the College of Engineering and Computer Science.

“It was so fabulous that top companies like Microsoft and others were hiring engineers from Syracuse right out of college because they were fully prepared to go mainstream,” says Venkateswaran. “I still remember those classes and don’t get me wrong; those class projects were pretty hard but they fully prepared me for the real world. If you are from Syracuse University and you have taken these classes and have done well, the industry knows you are prepared and ready for your professional career.”

Venkateswaran greatly appreciated the flexibility college leadership provided when he had a chance to gain valuable professional experience at the financial firm FOLIOfn in the Washington DC metro area.

“I was able to establish good credentials in the company I was doing an internship with and eventually they wanted me to join them full time. I came back to Syracuse and wrapped up my studies, got my degree and joined the same company full time. The transition from school to work was very smooth and I cannot thank the Syracuse University faculty enough for being supportive and flexible during that time.”

Syracuse University wasn’t just the start to his professional career. He also met his wife Krithika Sambandam G’04 on campus. “I still tell my family it is one of the most beautiful campuses in the northeastern United States in my opinion,” says Venkateswaran. “A beautiful campus. The facilities are fabulous. We just enjoyed our time in Syracuse.”

Venkateswaran worked as a software engineer for a few years and built an outstanding reputation as a creative problem solver. “As I got more experienced, I was recruited to work at other companies. I was getting to understand real world challenges and worked with some great mentors,” says Venkateswaran.

An opportunity to work with the non-profit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children(NCMEC) proved to be career defining. NCMEC works with the government and the law enforcement agencies across the country to solve crimes against children. “When I was hired to lead the technology operations of the Center, as a new parent, I was personally driven to work on issues affecting children. With the support of my colleagues, I was able to do technology transformation and modernize the Center’s operations” says Venkateswaran.

When a child goes missing, the first few hours are critical to their safe recovery. The Department of Justice had developed a special program called Amber Alert with the goal of quickly sending out communications when a child goes missing and is determined to be in a critical situation. NCMEC was authorized to operate as a secondary distributor of these alerts. “We partnered very closely with the Department of Justice and the Federal Emergency Management Agency and built a new system to rapidly create these alerts and integrated it with the federal wireless emergency alert system to distribute them to all the cell phones in a geo-targeted fashion. Later on these geo-targeted alerts were integrated with the social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and others as well.” 

As cell phone and social media usage became widespread across the United States, a system that could contact almost everyone in an area around where a child goes missing showed tremendous results. “The success stories that come out of it are fascinating. When people are on the road, they can see this alert and they can see the car that is in the alert. When they see the car or the child and call law enforcement – now the child is immediately recovered,” says Venkateswaran. 

“The program was already popular and widely successful. We were able to take it to the next level with the use of modern technology. The impact was massive. People adopted it and the way they responded – it was wonderful.” Venkateswaran and his colleagues saw that they weren’t just using technology to solve a problem, they were changing lives. “I was fortunate to work on it. It wasn’t possible without a lot of collaboration. I feel like I did something for society and I’m incredibly proud of the work.”

He went on to work at Capital One while the credit card giant was modernizing their platforms internally. “It was an exciting time to be there and to be a part of something massive,” says Venkateswaran. “For a technologist it was a place where the possibilities were endless. As a leader, I was able to hire top talent and together we could run our imagination and do cutting edge work which helped transform the company into a leading tech organization, decades ahead of others in the industry.”

His continued success was noticed in the tech industry and he was recruited by leading Private-Equity(PE) firms which are essentially an investment management firm that buy companies and then actively manage them to improve their performance. “Technology is often a big part and the complex part of these companies’ turnaround story. My strong technical skills combined with the executive leadership experience have prepared me well to lead these complex initiatives and the technology transformation of these companies have created significant value.” 

Venkateswaran credits his time at Syracuse University with building his core skills and his mentors who have helped him to shape his approach to creative problem solving. “In my professional career, it’s always been that one thing led to another. I never said no to new opportunities or challenges that were presented. Whenever a new opportunity came by, I evaluated it and if I saw a possibility to have a broader impact, I said let’s give this a shot,” says Venkateswaran. “Syracuse University offers amazing possibilities. I would highly encourage students to go there.”