Tessy Thomas
Became the first woman to lead an Indian missile programme in a field almost entirely run by men
Tessy Thomas was born in Alappuzha, a coastal town in Kerala, one of four daughters raised by her mother after her father, a bank employee, died when she was young. Money was tight, and higher education for girls in the family was not automatic, but she pursued engineering, studying electrical and later guided missile engineering, eventually earning a doctorate in missile guidance technology.
She joined India's Defence Research and Development Organisation in 1988 and spent the following decades working on the Agni series of long-range ballistic missiles, one of the very few women in a workforce and a specialism that was almost entirely male. In 2009 she became project director for Agni-IV, and later Agni-V, missiles with ranges long enough to be considered central to India's strategic deterrence, work that required her to master re-entry technology, guidance systems and solid propulsion in unusually exacting detail.
In 2018 she was appointed director general of the Aeronautical Systems cluster at DRDO, becoming the first woman to hold that level of authority over India's missile programmes. She has spoken publicly about balancing the secrecy and pressure of defence work with raising a son largely as a single working mother during her most demanding project years, and has become a visible reference point for younger Indian women considering careers in engineering fields still dominated by men.