Vaniya Agrawal had confronted Microsoft bosses Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates and Satya Nadella at the firm’s 50th anniversary celebrations.
Tech giant Microsoft’s 50th anniversary celebrations at the company’s headquarters in Washington’s Redmond last week were disrupted by pro-Palestinian protests. In both cases, voices were raised by Microsoft’s own employees.
Both the Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and former CEO Steve Ballmer were present in the audience when the protest began as the company’s AI chief Mustafa Suleyman presented product updates and a long-term vision for the tech giant’s artificial intelligence assistant.
In the first incident, an employee identified as Ibtihal Aboussad shouted, “Mustafa, shame on you”. She walked towards the stage and further said, “You claim that you care about using AI for good, but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military. Fifty thousand people have died, and Microsoft powers this genocide in our region. Stop using AI for genocide.”
Another incident drew a larger range of attention as Indian-American Microsoft engineer Vaniya Agrawal confronted Ballmer and Gates while they were onstage with the current boss, CEO Satya Nadella.
She yelled at the event, “Shame on you all. You’re all hypocrites. Fifty thousand Palestinians in Gaza have been murdered with Microsoft technology. How dare you. Shame on all of you for celebrating in their blood. Cut ties with Israel.”
Following her protest at the company’s anniversary celebrations, Agrawal also reportedly sent out a mass email, saying she had decided to leave Microsoft and her last day will be April 11.
“You may have seen me stand up earlier today to call out Satya during his speech at the Microsoft 50th anniversary,” she wrote, adding that in good conscience, she could no longer be a part of the company whose work has enabled genocide by Israel.
She cited recent reports by The Associated Press, which “exposed Microsoft’s critical role in enabling Israel’s apartheid regime and the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza”.
Who is Vaniya Agrawal?
As per her LinkedIn profile, Agrawal did her Bachelor of Science in software engineering from the Arizona State University in 2016-19 and graduated with a summa cum laude.
She was also awarded the Grace Hopper Scholarship by ASU, one which was received by only 35 students of the institution to attend the 2017 Grace Hopper Conference.
Before starting her career in software engineering, she worked as a tea consultant, social media manager at Adagio Teas in 2015 for a few months. She also worked as a medical assistant, receptionist at the True Health Medical Centre between March 2016 and December 2017.
It was only in May 2018, that she joined Amazon as a software development engineer intern for a period of four months. And later joined as a full time employee in September 2019, before leaving the company in October 2022.
Agrawal became a part of Microsoft in September 2023, joining the tech giant firm as a software engineer II.
Now, following her pro-Palestine protest at the company’s anniversary celebrations and in good conscience, Agrawal will leave Microsoft on April 11.
Microsoft fires both workers
Microsoft has fired two employees who interrupted the company’s 50th anniversary celebration to protest its work supplying artificial intelligence technology to the Israeli military, according to a group representing the workers.
Microsoft accused one of the workers in a termination letter Monday of misconduct “designed to gain notoriety and cause maximum disruption to this highly anticipated event.” Microsoft says the other worker had already announced her resignation, but on Monday it ordered her to leave five days early.
The article originally appeared on Hindustan Times.
