About

Ajay Prasad is a highly accomplished Design Leader with a passion for building innovative and useful products that empower people with technology and help them improve their lives. With over 8 years of relevant experience, Ajay has had the opportunity to work on some great ideas in his previous stints at IBM Labs, Amazon India, Oracle R&D, and Hewlett Packard Labs. Currently, he is the Principal Director of Design at Microsoft Teams in Bangalore, India where he heads design and research for the platform. Ajay has a diverse background in computer science, design, and business management. He graduated with an interdisciplinary degree in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon and went on to study Artificial Intelligence and complete a specialization in Graphic Design. With his business education at IIM Bangalore, he transitioned into design management to act as a bridge between design and business. At Microsoft Teams, Ajay provides leadership to a large multidisciplinary team spanning design managers, user researchers, interaction designers, visual designers, UX writers, and UX engineers. He guides and facilitates strategic design direction for several core areas in Teams: Search, Calendar, Feeds, Files, IT Pro, and Platform Ecosystem, across desktop, mobile, and other devices. As of April 2021, Teams has more than 145+ million daily active users (across work, school, and life) engaging in rich forms of communication and collaboration. Ajay is also a co-founder of the Empowher conference that’s focused on fostering a stronger sense of community among women at Microsoft IDC. He is a Diversity & Inclusion Champion for the Teams org in India and is leading the A11y Advocates initiative in India. He received the 2021 Award for Leadership Excellence in Microsoft IDC for his outstanding contributions. While he's not busy white-boarding, brainstorming ideas, or moving pixels, Ajay can be found traveling or running a non-profit foundation. He recently took a year off from full-time work to pursue adventures that include summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa, hiking the Inca trail in Peru, and exploring penguin colonies in Antarctica. Ajay's other interests include product strategy and management, behavioral economics, consumer behavior, philosophy, sustainable architecture, music, and TED.