Padma Jagannathan
Padma was born and raised in Chennai, India and moved to San Diego in 1998. She holds a BS in Engineering (1995) from India, an MBA (2002) from UC Irvine and a (labor of love) M.A in English (2019) from SNHU. She worked in the technology industry for twenty-five years starting in India implementing IT solutions in Singapore and UK, followed by working on Strategy and Business Development for Qualcomm, and her most recent role was running Operations for Xpeng Inc. in the US. She lives in Carmel Valley with her husband who is an engineer, and their daughter Sree is now a first-year in college in Maine.
Padma's journey with birds started when 7-year-old Sree asked for a pet and got a bird feeder instead. Little did she know that it would lead Sree and (indirectly) Padma to the San Diego Bird Alliance, first going on bird walks, then as restoration volunteers and Ternwatchers, and later as advocates. Her family has been incredibly lucky to have travelled to so many places of natural beauty and biodiversity and to call one such place home.
Protecting such places and biodiversity is what drew her to the Conservation Committee of SDAS. An avid reader who loves to read everything from Shakespeare to sci-fi/fantasy, she finds herself reading and learning more about the natural world these days.