As Chief People and Places Officer at Okta, Vijay Rao is best known for building the company’s high-performance culture while expanding its workforce from 2,000 to more than 6,000 people. His work is visible in Okta’s thoughtful mental health programming, where Rao’s team organizes healing circles, live meditation sessions, and resilience-building events that reach employees in over a dozen countries. He believes that year-round access to mental healthcare, not just seasonal campaigns, is what truly supports employee wellbeing—evidenced by Okta’s partnerships with providers like Modern Health and a dedicated mental health Slack channel that acts as both a safe space and a resource hub.
Born in India, Rao earned a bachelor’s degree in history with a minor in legal studies from Brandeis University. His 25-year career spans strategic people leadership at companies including Meta and Microsoft. At Meta, he scaled the Global People Operations team from just two people to over 500 while the company itself grew to 85,000 employees. Earlier at Microsoft, he led a five-year global recruiting system transformation. At Okta, Rao’s remit spans talent strategy, workplace systems, and organizational culture. He is a hands-on leader who combines technical fluency with people strategy to modernize HR functions at scale.
Rao is also deeply engaged with the startup ecosystem, advising companies like XP Health and AllVoices—not to expand his résumé, but to give back. “I’ve worked at startups in the past, so I know what it takes to try to make things successful,” he says. His hands-on mindset extends to innovation at Okta too, where he recently launched a tech solution to proactively predict attrition using internal data. Whether supporting global teams or guiding founders, Rao keeps one principle front and center: people strategy only works when it’s paired with empathy and execution.