State Bank of India (SBI) Chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya has been appointed as the Chairperson of the Society and Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Management Sambalpur.
Mentored by the IIM Indore, the IIM Sambalpur is among the six new IIMs which the Government of India approved to establish in its Budget 2014-15. The other new IIMs or the 3rd generation of IIMs are IIM Vishakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), IIM Bodh Gaya (Bihar), IIM Sirmaur (Himachal Pradesh), IIM Nagpur (Maharashtra) and IIM Amritsar (Punjab).
Bhattacharya will be the Chairperson of IIM Sambalpur for the next five years, starting from January 15, 2016.She is the first woman to lead an India-based Fortune 500 company.
In 2015, Bhattacharya was named the 30th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes. In the same year, she was ranked among the top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine and the 4th most powerful women in Asia Pacific by Fortune. She was named the first female chair at the SBI in 2013 after nearly four decades of service.