Asia Leadership

As Human Resources (HR) Vice President for Microsoft Asia, Annella Heytens leads the people and talent strategy aligned to Microsoft’s mission and business goals across the region and ensures that the company is creating a culture that attracts and inspires the world’s most passionate talent. In her role, she is focused on providing HR leadership to the business, aligning people strategy, and enabling business performance by making Microsoft an exceptional place to work and empowering our more than 40,000 employees across the region to thrive.

Prior to joining Microsoft in 2022, Heytens gained more than 20 years of global HR leadership experience, most recently at Amazon Web Services where she was the Head of People Experience and Technology for the APJC region. She also held leadership positions at the Coca-Cola Bottling Investments Group, Cisco Systems and Willis Towers Watson.

Heytens is a passionate advocate of Diversity and Inclusion and is a certified Master Practitioner from the Institute for Human Resource Professionals (IHRP), awarded to her in recognition for her active involvement with and thought leadership of the HR industry. She holds Master’s Degrees from Tufts University, Massachusetts and Cornell, and has lived and worked in the United States, India, Indonesia, Greater China Region and Singapore and is deeply connected to the Asia region.