Harsha Jalihal is the Chief People Officer at MongoDB, a modern general-purpose database platform, bringing more than 20 years of experience in a broad range of HR, recruiting, and business roles. She formerly served as Vice President of HR at Unilever.

During her tenure at Unilever, Jalihal was responsible for delivering the end-to-end HR strategy and operations for the US business. She co-created Unilever’s strategy to build a sustainable future of work across its multinational business in partnership with the Global CHRO. Furthermore, Jalihal was on a part-time secondment to the World Economic Forum (WEF), where she contributed to their thought leadership on the future of work and co-authored HR 4.0, a framework for shaping people strategies in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Before joining Unilever, she started her career as a business development associate with a software company and found her true calling as an HR business partner at Cognizant Technology Solutions in 2004. She spent 10 years at Cognizant, helping the company through its hyper-growth phase, where she designed and operationalized strategy to drive early career hiring. In this role, she also led a Center of Excellence focused on HR expertise in strategic outsourcing deals and acquisitions and ran operations for the CFO & COO. She was instrumental in laying the early foundations of Cognizant’s approach to talent acquisition, talent management, reward management, and employee relations. Her significant contributions to the field earned her recognition as one of Crain's New York Notable Women of Talent for 2020.

Diversity, Workplace Diversity, Culture, Diversity Topics, Business, Workplace Issues, Corporate Culture, Human Resources, Indian Heritage, DEI Racism,