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Tanveer Patel serves as founder, president and CEO of Azikewe Systems. Patel's IT outsourcing software firm is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, with a wholly owned development center in India. Founded in 2002, Azikewe Systems clients span the US, UK and India. Patel has eight years of IT industry experience, and cut her teeth on strategic planning, product development, sales projecting and sales training while working as General Manager of Sales and Marketing for MicroLan Solutions. Patel's formal education includes a BS in Computer Science and MS from the University of Minnesota. A mother of two boys, Patel was born in Bangalore, India and is now a naturalized US citizen. Below, in Patel's own words, she relates the importance of her upbringing to becoming the entrepreneurial leader that she is today.
In India, in Bangalore, I spent my childhood near my father's side, where I latched on to his ideals, philosophies and to the dream of running our family business one day. Through him I learned about networking, business development, management and more by observing his interactions with others. My father was educated as an attorney, yet he didn't practice law; instead, my father started a transportation company that he grew to 32 Branch offices nationwide. At the dinner table each night, he would share how he solved a business problem that day, everything from personnel to customer issues. I studied how he thought strategically. When I was a teenager I accompanied him to his meetings at his insistence, as a way to build my self-confidence. He taught me that a person can accomplish anything if she puts her mind to it and if she is goal oriented.

I got married and moved to the United States in 1990 when my husband, Maqbol Patel was working on his doctorate in Computer Science at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Upon completion of Maqbol's PhD. and of my BS in Computer Science, we moved to Chicago. My husband worked for GE, and I went to work for First Bank systems of Minnesota and then M&I Data Services in Milwaukee. From there, I took a more challenging position with MicroLan Solutions as General Manager of Sales and Marketing.

In my heart I am an Entrepreneur like my father; at the age of nine, I decided that I wanted to someday run my own company. Having worked and gathered experience in the U.S. model for a few years, I proposed to my family that I would like to venture into the software development business. Maqbol launched GE's first offshore outsourcing office in India and I saw firsthand that the outsourcing model, though difficult to do well, makes very good business sense. That I have both the cultural exposure of East and West makes it a wonderful opportunity.

In 2002, I founded Azikewe Systems with four friends who quit their high paying jobs at InfoSys in Bangalore to join me. Graduates of Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT's, the top universities of India) they brought the talent and knowledge of technologies like Java and dot Net wireless applications that helps Azikewe Systems to deliver to our customers high-end solutions. I have gotten great support from my family, my friends and more recently, our colleagues in Birmingham, since deciding to undertake this adventure.

We moved the company headquarters from Chicago to Birmingham in 2003. Coming to Birmingham was the best move for me, my family and for Azikewe Systems. Birmingham's excellent history of entrepreneurial start-ups and business incubators fits our business needs, and the culture is in many ways like that of my native Bangalore.

The memory of my father motivates me; especially when in my toughest situations I recall the things I learned at his side. Apart from my professional goals of growing Azikewe Systems, my personal goal is to help grow other businesses in the Birmingham community. Just as my father's teachings have helped me grow, I want to teach the ingredients of my success. I want to help others, my kids and other businesswomen in our community who have aspirations. This led me to accept the position of President for the US Women's Chamber of Commerce for Alabama.

At Azikewe, we believe in our dream and we all know in our hearts that we are in the right place.