Hema's Bio

Hi, I am Hema Rajalakshmi. I am a Program Manager in the Windows Embedded team at Microsoft. I have been with Microsoft since July 2005. The work I do is pretty interesting – what I do is look at a Windows feature set (like, Internet Explorer) and break it apart into pieces and then put them back together into several packages so it is optimal for Embedded users. In the process of doing this, I learn about that feature in great depth and develop a taste for the various Embedded user scenarios. Other aspects I look into when creating these packages are, how those packages can be serviced efficiently, what configuration options can we make available for embedded users to help them tailor this package to their need. Those are some really interesting challenging aspects of my work at Microsoft.

As a bit of history about me, prior to joining Microsoft, I worked for various other companies in the Seattle area, including AT&T Wireless and Premera BlueCross. I started my career as a VC++ developer and then switched gears to being a Java developer and then finally changed my role to be a Program Manager in 2005. I graduated from Indian Instituted of Technology (Kharagpur, India) and worked in Bangalore, India for about 3 years before relocating to US.

I came to the United States with my husband (who works for Microsoft as well) and my 9 month old daughter (who is now almost 11 yrs old!). In the last 10 years of living in the United States, our family expanded from 3 to 4 with addition of another daughter (who is now 7 yrs old). At home, the four of us, love spending time playing board games and hiking. A personal passion of mine is music and I am a lead singer in a local Indian music band.