Nalini Kotamraju Remarks

Nalini Kotamraju, Senior Vice President, Salesforce
February 2, 2024

I am here because I had the very good fortune to be randomly assigned to be Laura's roommate our very first year at Harvard. This is why I stand before you.

During our undergraduate years, I built the strongest of friendships. Laura is my chosen family. Her extended family is an extension of my own. And our friendship is one of the things I value most from my undergraduate experience.

So in preparation for these remarks, when Laura asked me to make them, I thought, wow, she must really trust me to let her college roommate get up in front of a whole group of people and share her experiences. But I’m gonna hopefully do right by them. So I thought about what I might share. I thought of the first thing that somebody mentioned: compassion and kindness. And one of the things I always think about, about our early friendship, is the compassion she showed. 

We lived together all four years, but it took me until my sophomore year to realize that Laura was in no shape or form a morning person. So I had spent my first year getting up super early, 6:30 in the a.m., and going [singsong going-about-my-business sounds]. And Laura in her kindness let me go on. She knew I needed that. And it wasn’t until we knew each other a little better that she course-corrected in a gentle way. 

The second thing, which often happens in college, was I considered her questionable, inexplicable beverage choices in college. Right? You think you know where this is going, but you don’t. Laura really liked Tab. Some of you in the audience may be wondering what on earth is Tab? Tab no longer exists, which it shouldn’t. Because it is gross beyond belief. Laura drank a lot of Tab. So I thought of those moments, which are clearly precious to me. 

But then I also thought about two sort of threads of experience I’ve had of Laura that might resonate and foreshadow the experience I think you are already having and will continue to have with Laura as a leader, as a colleague, as an intellectual, as a professor, as a thought partner, as a visionary, and as a transformative leader. I think of two things. One is the focus on women, which you’ve heard here. When Laura told me she had accepted this role, I laughed aloud in joy at the absolute rightness of the fit. The idea of Laura leading a college for women, a college as revered as Barnard is, seemed completely consistent with the value she’d always placed on the importance of women. 

This is something we shared. I’m the product of single-sex school from grade one to 12. My daughter, 12 years old, who’s in the audience with me, is at an all-girls school in San Francisco, the Hamlin School for Girls. Laura and I share this passion for single-sex education. As somebody mentioned earlier, Laura was a women’s studies concentration — Harvard’s fancy word for major. What’s interesting to note is Laura was a women’s studies concentration, full stop. It wasn’t women’s studies in English, or women’s studies in economics, or women’s studies in something else. The doubters and the haters at the time, and it was back in the day, alright, we’re a little bit older, implied that doing women’s studies alone as a concentration would not prepare her enough intellectually for a career and lay the foundation, but Laura believed otherwise. She held firm that women’s studies in and of itself was enough. That women were enough, and that women can be the subject. 

The second quality of Laura, that stems from college, which people have already spoken about, is this idea of exploration. The joy of a liberal arts education is this broad exposure to ideas. It’s not just ideas and topics, but it’s also people. And it’s that foundation that leads to a rich, meaningful life personally and professionally. But in order to take the greatest advantage of a liberal arts education, you have to come ready. You have to come ready, open not just in mind but open in heart to what broad exposure you might have. 

In a world that moves really quickly to specialize, to pigeonhole, to label, to narrow, Laura came with a different attitude. It hasn’t come up yet, but Laura thought she was going to be pre-med for a while. She took all of the science courses our first years, and you know, in very Rosenbury style, she excelled in them. She decided she wanted to study something else. She also explored other careers in a way that I never had the courage to and probably was a little sanctimonious about. The best investment banks chased her upon graduation to come join them. And she could have and decided to do something else.

She explored all throughout her undergraduate years with an open heart and mind. And we shouldn’t confuse having that open heart and mind with not having a strong point of view. Or rock-solid morals, which I bear witness to, from her family, her parents who are here and her siblings, who all I can say raised her right. The quality comes that Laura has from trying, daring, assessing, pivoting, learning, listening, as you’ve heard, iterating and improving, combined with a sharp intellect and really strong core values. You know, all the things that we value in a leader and all the things that I value in my dearest friend.

Congratulations, Barnard. And congratulations, Laura.