Great work often happens quietly, behind the scenes. Someone stays late to help a colleague untangle a problem, someone rebuilds a plan from scratch because the old one no longer holds, someone earns the trust of a team simply by showing up for it every day. The Jarvis Rising Stars Award has celebrated the emerging talent shaped by the Jarvis Talent Incubation program. Now we're introducing the Quarterly Rising Star program to recognize colleagues across the business who set the standard for high performance.
This first round drew four strong nominations, and the winner is someone whose impact was hard to miss.
We're proud to announce our inaugural Jarvis Quarterly Rising Star: Tapas Mohapatra, Solutions Architect (Data & AI).
Tapas joined Jarvis just over a year ago and has spent the last six months as Solution Architect on one of Jarvis’s most demanding client engagements. In that short time, he's become the person the team turns to. That standing comes from how he shows up for the work and for the people doing it, day to day, rather than from his title alone. His nomination, submitted by Adrienne Lok, Senior Director, AI & Digital Innovation, paints a clear picture of why he was the right choice to kick off this program.
Growing a delivery team under pressure
Tapas has spent the past year leading architecture on one of Jarvis's most demanding engagements, a project with a complex scope that pushed the team to work in ways they hadn't before. Rather than simply directing the work from above, he built a delivery team from the ground up. Colleagues describe him bringing people along with stretch assignments, real ownership, and the space to ask questions. The result is a team that now reasons through complex architecture with genuine fluency, and one that consistently performs above what the original staffing model anticipated.
When the project's direction became unclear, Tapas stepped in to give the team something concrete to work against. He held a high bar, including for his own work, and that steadiness carried through some genuinely difficult stretches.
“He is the person who holds the architecture together and the person the team turns to, and those two things rarely come in the same package.” – Adrienne Lok
Getting into the detail
Tapas is known for staying close to the work rather than operating purely at the architect level. When a major rebaseline of the project plan was needed, he rebuilt the estimates from scratch, inventorying every job and table and building a scoring rubric to size the work consistently. That rigor meant the team committed to a more accurate scope and delivered against it without adding headcount.
He has also taken on planning and estimating responsibilities well outside his usual remit, factoring in sequencing, capacity, and who on the team was ready to take on new work. When estimates were challenged by the client, he took the feedback seriously and reworked the numbers rather than defending them for their own sake.
Time for the people who need it
Perhaps what stands out most in Tapas's nomination is how he treats mentorship. Even during some of the busiest weeks on the engagement, he makes time to sit with junior team members and work through problems until they genuinely understand the reasoning behind the solution. It's a habit that has shaped the culture of the team as much as any process or tool he's introduced.
As Adrienne put it, “The team is more capable now than when the project started, and that's the part that matters most, because it outlasts any single engagement.”
Congratulations, Tapas!
