Mounica Veggalam

Mounica Veggalam, Leadership Coach

Most impactful leadership lies at the intersection of:
- Personal growth
- Showing up with strong presence
- Learning to connect and lead other humans

I support leaders to scale their impact and create business results by guiding them through the above areas.

Career and Leadership Coach

Microsoft

I often get asked, “How are you a leadership coach when you haven’t been a manager yourself?”

The leadership I talk about is not strategic or tactical.

It’s self-leadership.

Your career trajectory — whether you reach C-Suite heights, or stay stuck in the middle — it starts with you. With what’s going on inside you.

This is the powerful lesson I realized at Microsoft. 

I observed inadequate leadership, average leadership, and excellent leadership. 

I was in heated design discussion rooms, witnessed managers make technical choices from their insecurities, and noticed the best empathetic leaders lost in overwhelm without any recognition.

I also saw powerful leadership from people who challenged the status quo. And challenged their own beliefs.

They were the people who did the right thing
- even when they’re anxious,
- even when they’re frustrated,
- even when they were at the edge of saying, “screw this sh**”

Your frustrations, disappointments, and resentments are where your growth opportunities lie.

When you understand and transform your inner landscape, your capacity for leadership expands, and you'll see the outside results: the promotion, the better project, and the better titles.

That’s the best way to make an impact in this world.

This is transformational leadership.

If you want to learn to lead your people from the inside-out, reach out and we’ll talk.

I am deeply invested in my personal transformation and leadership. That’s how I’m a leadership coach. That’s how I lead my clients to discover entirely new ways of presenting themselves.

I offer trainings, coaching and deep personal transformation, so you can feel fulfilled in your leadership mission. Send me a private message and we’ll chat.

Software Engineer

Practice Fusion

One of my mentors there asked, “Would you rather teach your kids to be smart or to be kind?”

What if I could do both?

With that question, I realized how starkly I’m drawn to deep philosophical concepts and the nature of the human mind. 

And this realization would set it in years later. But I didn’t know that then.

This internship was my entry into the software engineering world. 

It was incredible, surrounded by brilliant people in the startup culture. This is where I released my first feature into production, had my first exceptional manager, and gave my first talk in front of 200 smart people (I was terrible). 

It paved the way for another incredible role at Microsoft.

I won’t lie— I was arrogant about my IQ and my ability to grasp technical concepts quickly.

But I also had crippling self-doubt and introversion that got in the way of my impact.

Even through all that, a couple of things are common today:
— I value people and human connection. Regardless of my arrogance and self-doubt.
— I’m constantly pushing myself beyond my comfort zone. No matter how scary it is.
— I always look at my side of things. Even when I don’t want to. Especially when I don’t want to.

Today, this helps me serve my clients powerfully, 
— I point to the truth at the risk of them not liking me.
— I can deeply support them in facing the risks and uncertainities.
— I invest time and energy in confronting my beliefs and blindspots, so they don’t have to manage my ego.

It's a deeply rewarding experience.

Software Development Engineer Intern

Life & leadership coach for professionals, leaders and entrepreneurs | Software engineer turned coach & inner-work guide

Hi there! 👋 I’m Mounica. I help visionary tech leaders fast-track their careers so they can create more impact, build stronger teams, and bring their vision to reality, all with joyful life-balance.

I’m a software engineer turned transformational coach. Throughout my career, I was driven and confident on the outside. I achieved accolades, promotions, and patents. On the side, I tried to handle all my dissatisfaction with life through meditation and spiritual studies.

But none of that changed the *experience of life.*

I was always looking into the future for everything to settle down. My conversations lacked joy. I was subtly controlling in my relationships so I didn't break down. I was obsessed with achievement. 

Now I have a general sense of creative joy while taking up big projects. And I'm more present with my family.

It wasn't an overnight transformation (nothing worthwhile ever is). I approach this work from an intersection of developmental psychology (think ontological leadership and Robert Kegan's constructive map) and Eastern non-dual spirituality. 

Here are 3 levels of transformation you can expect through working with me:
1. Embodying your leadership voice & an internal compass, so you show Executive Presence.
2. Holding multiple, often conflicting, perspectives, so you bring a vision you deeply desire to reality.
3. Holding multiple identities, so you find creative joy in every choice you make (and have you ready for non-dual interconnected perception of the world).

This work is not about adding knowledge or skills but creating a *fundamentally different kind of mind* that takes the largest perspective, is more complex, and can handle more uncertainty.

My clients report:
- Influence without losing their ethics or empathy
- Command respect in a room full of brilliant (or skeptical) people
- Have ease, joy, and fun creating the results they want

If you’re curious, send me a DM!

Helping tech managers fast-track their careers with personalized 1:1 coaching.

I help with -
- Making tough career decisions
- Landing the next big role and making a vertical moves
- Transforming into a leader who delivers, impacts, and inspires.

Management skills and Relationships come easy to people managers. But what sets you apart is the Leadership mindset. I help managers become leaders and achieve their career goals along the way. 

The typical titles of my clients include:
- Engineering Manager
- Director of Engineering/Program/Product Management
- PM Manager
- Senior/Principal Engineers/PM

Advantis Global (Contract @ Apple)

Aligning LLMs to make them useful (HHH) Chatbots in specialized scenarios!

Machine Learning Engineer

Interview Kickstart

Teaching ML courses as part of IK's program to help software professionals jump start their career in AI/ML.

ML Instructor

Software Engineer, Computer Vision

Cognitiv

Optimizing ad spending for Enterprise customers!

Principal Machine Learning Engineer

Robotic Embedded Systems Laboratory @ USC

● Demonstrated that imitation learning from a motion planner combined with a deep image autoencoder can aid in visuomotor policy learning.
● Conducted research experiments in 2 different problem settings with results.
● Written the first two drafts of the research paper and iterated on it with other researchers until it is ready for publication. (Motion Planner Guided Visuomotor Policy Learning https://sites.google.com/utexas.edu/mlmp-icra2021)

Graduate Research Assistant

Microsoft Corp.

2015 - 2018 : Azure Enterprise Messaging Team
           Led a feature team and delivered entity management as a micro service for Azure Service Bus. 
           The sole implementer of Service Fabric based provider for Durable Task Framework (persistent workflow system) - refer to : https://github.com/Azure/durabletask/tree/vnext_servicefabric 

2011 - 2015 : Asp.Net and Visual Studio
          One of the major contributors to brand new Visual Studio project system built ground up for Asp.Net 5.
          Major contributor to Asp.Net Scaffolding system and framework shipped in Visual Studio 2013.
          Sole implementer of Webforms Model Binding in Asp.Net shipped in .Net Framework 4.5.

2008-2010 : Mobile Developer Tools (Microsoft India)
          Part of team that shipped the first version of Visual Studio tooling and a brand new free Visual Studio SKU for Windows Phone 7 mobile tooling(built ground up). With the guidance of a strong mentor, delivered Drag and Drop designer experience inside Visual Studio for mobile developers and also contributed to the new free Visual Studio SKU that helps in wider friction free adoption.

Senior Software Engineer

Oracle

Software Developer

I value working on hard challenges by collaborating within a team sharing a common goal/purpose. My current interests are challenges involving Machine Learning and/or Computer Vision + Robotics. 

For the past 5 years, I leveraged my skills in Deep Learning to apply Computer Vision and LLM approaches to challenging problems in Robotics, Video Calling, and Chatbots. I operated in a Tech Lead role for 5+ years growing a muscle in overall project planning, alignment to business goals, prioritization, and working across cross-functional teams. During this time, I also helped/mentored other engineers.

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