‘Getting Stuff Done' at Zoom

Former corporate attorney-turnedinvestment banker, and now the first COO of Zoom, Aparna Bawa is riding the wave of video communications during the pandemic.

- Anshul Dhamija

APARNA BAWA COO and Interim Chief Legal Officer, Zoom Video Communications AGE: 43

EXECUTION and Aparna Bawa are synonymous. A reason why her team calls her by the moniker GSD — Get Stuff Done. The 43-year-old’s “I just need to do what it takes to get it done” outlook has rewarded her handsomely. Bawa was the only executive at Zoom Video Communications (Zoom) to receive a base salary increase (from $312,500 to $400,000) in the last fiscal following her promotion to the role of chief operations officer (COO), a first for the San Jose, California-based company. “There is a whole lot of stuff that needs to happen in the background to get this product (Zoom) to come to life and I am part of the team that does that,” she explains.

Bawa, who holds a B.Sc. in accounting from Marquette University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, was also awarded a hefty compensation of $10.62 million as part of her promotion in June 2020. The majority of her package consists of stock awards valued at more than $10.2 million, according to the company’s latest proxy statement. A more recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed that Bawa holds shares in Zoom worth over $25 million.

While Bawa has played a key role in scripting Zoom’s growth through the pandemic — revenue has gone up 326% in fiscal 2021 and net cash flow has increased 869% — she shies away from taking credit. “Billions of minutes are being utilised by Zoom. Over half a million businesses use Zoom to conduct their daily corporate/enterprises functions. It’s widely used now throughout the world thanks to the pandemic,” she tells