TOI correspondent from Washington: At a time the Trump administration is virtually immobilizing the movement of Indian students and professionals to America under pressure from MAGA hardliners, US telecom major T-Mobile rang a different tune on Monday, elevating Srinivas Gopalan, an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad, as its CEO.Gopalan, 55, who is currently the COO of T-mobile, will take over on November 1 from Mike Sievert, who has led the company since 2020 and is being promoted as vice-chairman. An industry veteran who began his career with Hindustan Unilever as a management trainee and worked with Bharti Airtel, Vodaphone, and Deutsch Telecom, Gopalan grew in New Delhi, and went to Delhi Public School and St Stephens. The appointment adds to a long list of India-born CEOs currently heading Microsoft, Google, IBM, FedEx and more than a dozen Fortune 500 companies who are being eyed warily by nativist MAGA elements opposed to globalization and foreign talent coming to the US and taking over “American jobs.”In a message he posted on Linked-in, Gopalan said he is deeply honored to take on the role as CEO and pledged to advance what he claimed is already a company with “America’s best network and digital/AI capabilities that are far ahead of anyone else in our industry.”T-Mobile stands fourth among big telecom companies in the US behind Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T, each with revenues of over $ 125 billion. But given what Satya Nadella and Sundar Pichai have done with Microsoft and Alphabet/Google respectively, the T-mobile board is expecting Gopalan to push up its revenues from the current $81 billion closer to the leaders and eventually overtake them given his vast experience on the industry and his global background, having worked in Asia, Europe, and the US. Following his elevation, Gopalan gee’d up T-mobile 70,000 employees saying “Team Magenta is special because of how skilled, determined and thoughtful we are. I’m delighted to support this team as CEO and look forward to building an even brighter future, together, for T-Mobile and the millions of Americans we’re dedicated to serving every day.” Team Magenta, derived fromT-Mobile’s signature color, is a term used by the company to refer to its employees in an internal branding effort that emphasizes a unified, collaborative, and customer-focused identity.But MAGA hardliners have lately been seeing red over immigrants and foreign-born executives and professionals, whom they view as “globalists,” taking over “American jobs.” Even foreign-born US lawmakers are being viewed suspiciously if they do not subscribe to the MAGA agenda of completely shutting out immigrants.Gopalan, whose executive profile describes him as a “passionate cricket fan” with other personal interests like blues music and long-distance running, lives in Bellevue near Seattle, Washington, where T-mobile in headquartered. It’s only a few miles from Redmond, headquarters of Microsoft, led by a fellow cricket fan Satya Nadella.