Vijay Rao

Vijay Rao currently serves as Chief People and Places Officer at Okta, overseeing the company’s global People and Workplace strategy and teams. He has been a leader in building and growing People functions for more than 25 years. Throughout his career, Vijay has built and scaled diverse and inclusive teams which have innovated world class People processes and systems for start-ups and Fortune 500 companies. Vijay is a strengths-based leader and coach leveraging a unique blend of strategic thinking, people and business acumen, and technical skills to drive success.

Prior to this role, Vijay was SVP, People at Okta, leading teams focused on the attraction and retention of talent, employee engagement, and scaling of processes and systems during Okta’s growth from 2,000 to over 6,000 employees.

Before joining Okta, Vijay built and drove the strategy and execution of Meta’s Global People Operations function, scaling the team from 2 people to 500+ to support growth for the overall workforce from 3,000 to more than 85,000.

Previous to his work at Meta, Vijay spent time at Microsoft as a technical product manager and leading a 5-year global recruiting system and process transformation. Earlier in his career, Vijay has also had roles in benefits strategy and administration and software professional services consulting and implementation.

Vijay earned a B.A. in History at Brandeis University and a minor in Legal Studies and received an HR certificate at Bentley College.  In addition, Vijay is a previously certified Project Management Professional (PMP), Six Sigma Greenbelt, and an Eagle Scout.