Lakshmi Narayanan

Lakshmi Narayanan (born 1953) is the vice chairman and ex-CEO of Cognizant. He was the CEO and president of Cognizant until 2006.

Narayanan has played a leading role in the global information technology industry for more than 25 years, managing divisions and business units in Europe, India and the United States. Since joining Cognizant Technologies in 1994, he has been instrumental in formulating the company's strategy and building and managing the organization's development centers in India, where he is based. A member of Cognizant's Board of Directors, Narayanan spends time traveling extensively in the U.S. and Europe to meet clients.

He recently served as Chairman on NASSCOM (National Association of Software and Service Companies).

Narayanan began his career at Tata Consultancy Services, growing through the ranks from developer, to technologist, to program manager, to business leader. He was a regional head of Tata in India when he joined Cognizant as CTO. He holds a BS and MS in science and electronics from Bangalore University (University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering) and an PG Diploma from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Narayanan was awarded the Dataquest IT Person of the Year 2008 by the CyberMedia group's IT publication, Dataquest.