Sudha Murty was born in 1950 in Shiggaon, Haveri District in North Karnataka. She completed her engineering from BVB College of Engineering, obtained 1st rank across all branches and received a gold medal from the Institute of Engineers. She did her ME from Indian Institute of Science with distinction and started her career as an engineer with TELCO (now Tata Motors). Today, she is the chairperson of Infosys Foundation and has handled 16 national disasters in the last 24 years. She studied in a Kannada-medium school till the 10th standard and fell in love with the language. Her strong ties to the language and its people led her to establish more than 60,000 libraries in Karnataka. She also strongly believes in creating awareness for social causes and has passionately traveled the world for this purpose including universities and gatherings in USA, Columbia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, New Zealand, Australia, England, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Tibet, and Singapore. A prolific writer in English and Kannada, her books have been translated into all major Indian languages and have sold over 30 lakh copies around the country. She is a columnist for English and Kannada dailies with 30 books and more than 200 titles to her credit – including novels, non-fiction, children’s books, travelogues, technical books, and memoirs. She has also received nine honorary doctorates. Some of her awards include the R.K. Narayan Award for Literature, the Padma Shri in 2006, the Attimabbe Award from the government of Karnataka for excellence in Kannada literature in 2011 and the Lifetime Achievement by Crossword Book Awards in 2018. She lives by the belief that “Generosity of a few is hope for millions”.