Harsha Jalihal

Chief People Officer MongoDB

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Harsha Jalihal is Chief People Officer of MongoDB, the database company behind the document-oriented database of the same name, where she sits on the executive leadership team and owns workforce strategy, talent acquisition and development, diversity and inclusion, and total rewards. She was appointed in August 2020, when MongoDB had about 2,100 employees across 29 countries, and has since overseen a more than doubling of that workforce. Her background is unusual for a software company’s people chief: a decade at Cognizant during its hyper-growth years, where she built early-career hiring and the human-resources side of acquisitions, then five years at Unilever culminating as Vice President of HR for the US business — and, from inside that job, a part-time secondment to the World Economic Forum, where she co-authored HR 4.0, the Forum’s framework for how people strategies should work in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. She has remained in post through a change of MongoDB’s chief executive.

Career Highlights

• Appointed Chief People Officer of MongoDB in August 2020 and still listed in the role on the company’s own leadership page in September 2026, a tenure spanning two chief executives.
• Co-authored HR 4.0, the World Economic Forum’s framework for shaping people strategies in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, on part-time secondment to the Forum from Unilever.
• Oversaw growth that more than doubled MongoDB’s workforce across dozens of countries; the company was recognised as a Most Loved Workplace in Newsweek’s 2024 Excellence Index.
• Served as Vice President of HR for Unilever’s United States business, owning end-to-end HR strategy and operations, and co-created the company’s sustainable future-of-work strategy for its multinational operations.
• Spent roughly a decade at Cognizant Technology Solutions through its hyper-growth phase, designing its early-career hiring strategy and running a centre of excellence for the HR dimension of strategic outsourcing deals and acquisitions.
• Progressed at Cognizant from HR generalist and business partner to HR manager for mergers and acquisitions, chief of staff in the office of the president, and director of campus recruitment.

Professional Journey

Jalihal’s career began in India and has spent more than twenty years in people and culture roles. The longest single stint was at Cognizant Technology Solutions, where she worked for about a decade and moved through a notably broad range of functions rather than climbing a single ladder. She started as an HR generalist and business partner, then took on mergers and acquisitions — the HR side of integrating acquired companies — before serving as chief of staff in the office of the president and as director of campus recruitment. Along the way she designed and operationalised the company’s early-career hiring strategy and ran a centre of excellence focused on the human-resources expertise needed in strategic outsourcing deals. Cognizant was growing very fast during those years, and the work amounted to laying foundations — talent acquisition, talent management, reward management and employee relations — in an organisation that was outgrowing its own processes.

In 2014 she joined Unilever as HR director for marketing in North America, and by September 2019 had risen to Vice President of HR for the United States business, responsible for end-to-end HR strategy and operations. She also co-created Unilever’s sustainable future-of-work strategy for its multinational operations. The most distinctive part of that period was a part-time secondment to the World Economic Forum, where she contributed to the Forum’s thought leadership on the future of work and co-authored HR 4.0 — a framework for what people strategy should look like when automation and AI are reshaping the composition of the workforce. It is rare for an operating HR leader to have written the framework rather than merely implemented someone else’s.

She joined MongoDB as Chief People Officer in August 2020. At the time the company had more than 2,100 employees in 29 countries, and she described the appeal as shaping the future of HR for a knowledge-based company growing very quickly — explicitly framing people and culture strategy as being in service of the business strategy rather than parallel to it. Since then MongoDB’s headcount has more than doubled, and the company was named a Most Loved Workplace in Newsweek’s 2024 Excellence Index. She remains on the executive leadership team under chief executive CJ Desai, having been appointed under his predecessor Dev Ittycheria.

Education

Madras Christian College

Bachelor’s degree, Statistics

Xavier Institute of Management

Master of Business Administration