Shah, who is a former senior executive at pharma major Eli Lilly and Company, is one of the Nvidia board members who will soon decide Huang's successor after Colette Kress was appointed interim CEO.

Shah, who is a former senior executive at pharma major Eli Lilly and Company, is one of the Nvidia board members who will soon decide Huang's successor after Colette Kress was appointed interim CEO.

Shah, who is a former senior executive at pharma major Eli Lilly and Company, is one of the Nvidia board members who will soon decide Huang's successor after Colette Kress was appointed interim CEO.

As Nvidia remains mired in a crisis over the affairs of its founder and CEO Jensen Huang, Indian-origin executive Aarti Shah has emerged as one of the people who will have a say in the future of the tech giant.

A former senior executive at pharmaceutical major Eli Lilly and Company, Shah is one of the Nvidia board members who will soon decide a permanent successor to Huang after it appointed Colette Kress as interim CEO on Thursday.

This comes after New York Times reported Huang had two affairs—one reportedly with Kimberly Powell, an executive who joined Nvidia in 2008 and heads its health care vertical, and the other with Alice Huang, a Chinese businesswoman and alleged spy.

However, he also has no clear succession plan, which is another of the reasons why the future at the world-renowned chipmaker—and who could be brought in after Kress—remains a question.

The appointment of Kress—a former Microsoft executive and the company's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer—comes despite Nvidia earlier saying in a statement that Jensen was “committed to continuing to lead ... as CEO without interruption”, as per an NBC News report.

About Aarti Shah

The PhD holder serves on the board of not just Nvidia Corporation, but also Northwestern Mutual, an American financial services firm, and Swiss pharma giant Sandoz, in addition to two non-profits in various capacities—the Shrimad Rajchandra Love and Care USA and the St Jude's Children's Research Hospital.

Her professional journey began after she completed her PhD in statistics at the University of California's Riverside campus, after her MSc in mathematics and statistics from Gujarat University.

A significant chunk of her working life was spent at Eli Lilly and Company, which she joined in 1994 as a Senior Statistician. Her 27.5-year career at the Fortune 500 firm ended in June 2021, when she retired as its Senior Vice President and Chief Information and Digital Officer.

She then joined the boards of Nvidia and Northwestern in 2020, followed by Sandoz just three years later.

This makes her insights valuable as the future of the $4.5-trillion company hangs in the balance, though the question before the board is not an easy one either, since finding a permanent replacement for Huang, who has been crucial to all stages of the company's growth thus far, is an uphill task.

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