Kirthiga Reddy is an Indian-American business woman of many firsts. She is driven by the mantra “When businesses succeed, livelihoods flourish.”
Kirthiga was the first employee for the social media giant, Meta, in India and their Managing Director, Facebook India and South Asia for over six years. During that time, she set up one of Meta’s global operations centers that together serve over 3B people, built the Asia Pacific Small Medium Business, grew the India business to several $100M of annual revenue and got buy-in to double the sales and marketing team towards the vision of $1B+ annual revenue. Her subsequent experiences at Meta focused on emerging and high-growth markets including Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa and Middle-East.
Subsequently, she joined SoftBank as their first female Investment Partner, manager of the $130B SoftBank Vision Fund. She led ~$1B of new investments and an overall portfolio of $5B+ across nine investments across quantum computing, additive manufacturing, enterprise, mental wellness, metaverse, web3 and gaming sectors. She joined the Board of Directors for WeWork as part of the business turnaround as their first female Board Member. She served on the Investment Committee for Emerge, global accelerator for brilliant companies led by underrepresented founders.
Kirthiga is currently the CEO of a high-growth, venture-backed generative AI and web3 startup, Virtualness — a sports, creator and brands monetization platform. She is President, Athena Technology II, the third in a series of all women-led SPACs. She co-founder Liftery, a social impact initiative focused on changing the landscape for working women and stepping up the careers of ten million moms.
She has served on many public company, private company, educational and non-profit boards — including serving as Chair, Stanford Business School Management Board; and 2023 Blue Ribbon Commissioner for National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) to issue guidance on dynamics and culture within the Boardroom.
She holds an MBA from Stanford University – where she graduated with highest honors as an Arjay Miller Scholar, an M.S. in Computer Engineering from Syracuse University – where she was a convocation speaker, and a B.E. in Computer Science from Marathwada University, India. She has been recognized as Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business,” and as Fortune India’s “Most Powerful Women” among many other recognitions.