Notre Dame’s Mendoza hosts new series featuring conversations with top business leaders

The University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business will kick off a new speaker series on leadership with a host who knows the topic well: Tom Mendoza (ND ’73), who during his 25-year tenure with tech startup NetApp rose to the position of vice chairman and was considered instrumental in the development of the company’s corporate culture and its global recognition as one of Forbes’ “Great Places to Work.” Mendoza, former NetApp president and vice chairman, currently serves as the director of UiPath, Varonis and Vast Data.

Tom Mendoza Presents features Mendoza’ conversations with top business executives about their journey to success, what they learned along the way in forging great companies that have positive social and environmental impact as well as financial performance, and their advice to students and professionals as they build their careers. The format of the discussion includes 30-40 minutes of one-on-one interview between Mendoza and the speaker followed by 20 minutes of audience Q&A. Audience members can submit their questions in the chat function. During this academic year, the events will be held as webinars facilitated by ND Studios. The speakers include: October 16, 11 a.m. EST: Carl Eschenbach, partner at Sequoia Capital investing, which is considered one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capital firms. Eschenbach focuses on infrastructure technologies, cloud and SaaS investments. He is a director of Armis, Aurora, Cohesity, Gong, Palo Alto Networks, Snowflake, ThousandEyes, UiPath, Workday and Zoom. Eschenbach has 30 years of high-tech industry experience including infrastructure software, networking, telephony and storage. November 6, 1 p.m. EST: Jayshree Ullal, president and CEO of computer networking company Arista Networks, who is responsible for Arista’s business and strategic leadership in cloud networking. Ullal led the company to a historic and successful IPO in June 2014 and its entry into the S&P 500 in 2018. With more than three decades of networking and executive experience, she is the recipient of numerous awards including Barron’s 2018 “World’s Best CEOs” and Fortune’s 2019 “Top 20 Business Persons.” Webinars are free and open to the public and Notre Dame community. Attendance is limited for each lecture in the series. Attendees are invited to register but are not guaranteed participation in each session. To register, visit the registration page. For more information, visit Tom Mendoza Presents or contact Jean Meade, program manager, at Jean.Meade@nd.edu.