Kirthiga joined as the first Facebook India employee in July 2010 and was Managing Director of Facebook India and South Asia until her move to Facebook HQ in 2016. She set up the India operations in Hyderabad — supporting the company’s growing number of users, advertisers and developers worldwide — and built their APAC SMB business. She played a key role in building and maintaining strategic relationships with top regional agencies and clients and building the mobile marketing ecosystem. From 2016 to 2018, she was Managing Global Client Partner and Emerging Markets Lead for Global Partnerships, which manages the company’s most strategic global advertiser relationships.

Kirthiga has also held the position of VP and GM of Phoenix Technologies India, Director of Product Management at Motorola, Director of Engineering at Silicon Graphics and Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton, with most of her professional career based in Silicon Valley, California.

She holds an MBA from Stanford University, where she graduated with top honors as an Arjay Miller Scholar, an M.S. in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University and a B.E. in Computer Science from Ambedkar University, India.  

She serves as Vice Chair, Stanford Business School Management Board and member of Dean’s Leadership Council, Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science. She is an Advisor to Ballet & Beyond NYC NGO. She is passionate about causes for children and about developing women leaders.