Tata Trusts appoints Siddharth Sharma as CEO, Aparna Uppaluri as COO

Siddharth Sharma has been appointed as the CEO of Tata Trusts and Aparna Uppaluri has been appointed as the Chief Operating Officer.
According to an official statement, from 1st April, 2023, the appointment will be effective. For two decades, Sharma has been serving the government, where he was in charge of significant assignments in major ministries of the government, and served as the financial advisor to the 13th and 14th Presidents of India. He eventually joined the Tata group, where the recently formed sustainability portfolio has been headed by him.
According to the statement, Aparna Uppaluri has expertise in programme development and strategic planning in the fields of women’s rights, philanthropy, arts and culture, public health. He has more than twenty years of management and leadership experience, leading various initiatives at the Ford foundation, in order to proceed programmatic commitment to build up gender justice, serving as programme director to supervise various verticals of the Ford foundation.
A few internal candidates have been considered by the Tata Trusts board of trustees, for the position of CEO, following Srinath Narasimhan who is a veteran of Tata Group, and retired at the age of 60 years. According to the top executives who were close to the development, the names which were being discussed are Sukaran Singh, CEO of Tata Advanced Systems, Siddharth Sharma, Tata Sons group Chief Sustainability Officer.
The Tata Trusts is holding 66% of Tata Sons which is the group-holding company. In the year 2020, Narasimham was named as the first CEO of Tata Trusts, witnessing a transition towards a more professional management style. Previously, Narasimham was the MD of Tata Teleservices Ltd and Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) and a managing trustee handled Tata Trusts with 20 other trustees. Recently, Ratan Tata, who is 84 years old, has been eager to make certain that significant causes such as cancer treatment, malnutrition, education, sanitisation are pursued by the Trusts. Those who are being hired by the Trusts have the experience and knowledge to assist advance their reach in such major areas. Ratan Tata, who is the chairman emeritus of Tata Sons, is eager to make sure that both the institutions’ interests which involve the Tata Sons and the Tata Trusts are secured. Around 66% of the equity capital of Tata Sons is held by philanthropic trusts provided by the members of the Tata family.