Rashmi Sinha is an

Indian Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...

businesswoman and CEO of San Francisco-based technology company

SlideShare SlideShare is an American hosting service, now owned by Scribd, for professional content including presentations, infographics, documents, and videos. Users can upload files privately or publicly in PowerPoint, Word, PDF, or OpenDocument format. ...

. In 2012, '' Fortune'' named her No. 8 on its Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs list. In 2008, Rashmi was named one of the World's Top 10 Women Influencers in

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and ...

by ''

Fast Company ''Fast Company'' is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes six print issues per year. History ''Fast Company'' was launched in November 1995 by Alan Web ...

''. In January 2015,

The Economic Times ''The Economic Times'' is an Indian English-language business-focused daily newspaper. It is owned by The Times Group. ''The Economic Times'' began publication in 1961. As of 2012, it is the world's second-most widely read English-language bu ...

listed her as one of 20 "most influential" global Indian women.

Early life and education

Rashmi Sinha was born in

Lucknow Lucknow (, ) is the capital and the largest city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and it is also the second largest urban agglomeration in Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and division ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, grew up in India, and earned a PhD in cognitive neuropsychology at Brown University. There, Rashmi took computer science courses with Andy van Dam, so she had some exposure to the HCI (human-computer interaction) way of thinking. She took a course in designing educational software. Rashmi Sinha went to

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

for a postdoc where she switched her focus to human-computer interaction. She also earned an M.A. and a B.A. in Psychology from

Allahabad University , mottoeng = "As Many Branches So Many Trees" , established = , type = Public , chancellor = Ashish Chauhan , vice_chancellor = Sangita Srivastava , head_label ...

Business career

She then left academia at the University of California to start her own user-experience consultancy. Deciding that she enjoyed practical problems more, she co-founded Uzanto, a user experience consulting company and worked on projects for companies like eBay, Blue Shield, AAA etc. Her first foray into products was with MindCanvas (a game-like software for customer research) released in November 2005. Simultaneously, Rashmi and her husband, with the help of her older brother Amit Ranjan, built SlideShare, a site for people to share presentations online, in just six months. Since its launch in 2006, more than 9 million presentations have been uploaded to SlideShare, helping professionals connect through content. LinkedIn acquired SlideShare for over $100 million in 2012.

Personal life

Sinha is married to Jonathan Boutelle, who is the co-founder and Chief technology officer of

. They live in San Francisco. In 2008, Rashmi was named one of the World's Top 10 Women Influencers in Web 2.0 by Fast Company.

Management philosophy

Rashmi writes about social software and entrepreneurship at her blog; Rashmisinha.com. She is involved in the HCI community, was one of the founding members of the Information Architecture Society, and co-chairs the monthly BayCHI talk series.

References

External links