Anu Chitrapu is Senior Vice-President and Global Procurement Executive at Bank of America. She has won awards at the bank for exceptional performance, been named to the high potential women leaders group and serves as the Executive Sponsor for the Asian Leadership Network in Boston. She is a seasoned and dynamic business leader with a track record of motivating teams to step up their performance and a natural evangelist and influencer with the ability to get people excited about an organization and its mission.

Anu has been involved with TiE Boston since 2004, when along with a group of other TiE Boston women, she helped create the TiE Women’s Initiative (TiEWIN) with the mission of inspiring and empowering women leaders. TiEWIN brought luminaries like Indra Nooyi to speak at TiE Boston.  Anu was also part of the TiECON organizing team for multiple years. She became a charter member of TiE Boston in 2006 and joined the TiE Boston board in Jan 2020.

As a current board member, Anu is focusing on 3 areas to help grow the organization:

1. Strengthen partnerships with local Universities to create a pipeline of members through increased presence:  South Asian student bodies at business schools are the target audience for our pipeline! Past events at MIT and other Universities have proven to be successful at attracting these graduate students. Strategic partnering with Universities will help us reach them in cost effective ways.  

2. Increase awareness and improve branding of TiE Boston through increased media presence:  TiE Boston already has good branding - with a focus on increasing media presence, the branding can be strengthened to highlight the unique relevance of TiE Boston in our local entrepreneurial ecosystem.

3. Increase the % of women within the charter membership: Offer programs and incentives to attract more women Charter Members to TiE Boston. 

Anu is passionate about women empowerment, eliminating gender based violence, education for girls and protecting the environment. It was this passion that led to the creation of Nyrvaana, a social enterprise founded by Anu and her two sisters, with a mission of saving fabric from landfill while providing employment to disadvantaged women.

Anu was President of Vision Aid, a non-profit organization focused on helping the visually challenged. During her 6-year tenure, she pioneered a unique fund raising model that forms the backbone of the organization's growth. She is currently on the advisory boards of Saheli and Direct Action for Women Now (DAWN) and is an active member of several Boston based non-profit organizations including American India Foundation (AIF) and Ekal Vidyalaya.  

Writing has been a longstanding passion for Anu and she hopes to increase awareness of social issues through her writing. Her short story, "The Legacy", shone a spotlight on inequity and social injustice and was awarded second place in an international short story competition. She is also a columnist for India New England News.

Anu is married to serial technology entrepreneur Rama Ramakrishnan (currently Professor at MIT) and played a vital role in supporting his startups through their lifecycle from founding to successful exit. This first-hand experience imbued in her the business acumen and emotional intelligence needed to support entrepreneurs through their sometimes tumultuous journey from concept to success.

Anu holds an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

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