Ishit Vachhrajani, AWS Enterprise Strategist

Ishit Vachhrajani

AWS Enterprise Strategist

Ishit Vachhrajani, AWS Enterprise Strategist
Former roles

Global Chief Technology Officer, A+E Networks
VP, Global Products, Applications & Data Analytics, A+E Networks
Commercial Innovation Data & Integration Leader, NBCUniversal

Education

Executive Leadership Development Program, NAMIC, University of Virginia Darden School of Business
BS, Engineering, Instrumentation, and Control, Nirma Institute of Technology

Interests

Change management
Organizational design
Emerging technologies
Media & Entertainment
AI/ML
Data Analytics

Quote

A leader’s biggest challenge is not a wrong decision; it’s hesitating to make a decision.”

As Global Head of Enterprise Strategy, Ishit leads a team of former customer CxOs of large global organizations. Ishit’s team works with enterprise leaders worldwide to help them on their cloud journey, sharing their own experiences and strategies for increasing agility, driving innovation, and creating more customer-centric operating models. Ishit joined AWS in 2019, drawn by Amazon’s unique culture and the opportunity to work with the diverse set of seasoned leaders that make up the AWS Enterprise Strategy team.

Before AWS, Ishit spent the majority of his career in technology leadership positions with companies like A+E Networks, NBCUniversal, and GE. As Chief Technology Officer at A+E Networks, he led a major transformation of the technology function moving to the cloud, breaking down silos, and reorganizing the team for agility. He led a complete revamp of the core revenue products including global content sales and advertising sales, successfully integrated several international acquisitions, implemented global financial and HR platforms, and built an industry-leading data analytics platform. Ishit and his team also created AI-driven products to solve tough challenges around content discovery and monetization. He now shares his experiences in driving transformation, and his lessons on what worked (and what didn’t), with AWS customers to help them accelerate their own journeys.

One frequent topic of conversation with customers is how to accelerate their transformation. Ishit encourages leaders to start now, start small, then pivot and make adjustments along the way. Ishit believes that people learn best by doing, not by planning. While planning is important, overthinking can stand in the way of progress. He also advises customers that adopting cloud is not an end goal in and of itself. Cloud goals need to be based around the outcomes that cloud enables—like launching a new product or reaching customers in a new way.

Ishit is passionate about building high-performing teams, mentoring, and growing the next generation of leaders. He encourages executive teams to focus on their people. Succeeding at large transformational efforts requires building teams with a diversity of ideas and skills that can adapt with the ever-evolving customer needs.

Equipping new leaders goes beyond skills—it’s also about the right mindset. For example, Ishit has observed (in himself and others) that one of the biggest barriers to progress is indecision. To get past that barrier, and overcome fears of the unfamiliar, he advises leaders to be decisive and to recognize the difference between decisions that can be easily reversed and those that can’t.

Outside of work, Ishit and his family share a passion for discovering new places, often hitting the road on the weekends and determining their destination as they go along. He applies the same principle of discovering the unknown to his cooking, noting that his favorite recipe is, “Whatever I have never made before.”

Podcasts

Listen to our "Ask the AWS Strategists" mini-series within our Conversations with Leaders podcast, where Ishit Vachhrajani, Jake Burns, and Bryan Landerman discuss what they're hearing around the industry and common questions they get from customers.

 

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