Kavitha AK joins Mars as director- people & organisation 

Kavitha AK has joined Mars as director, people and organisation, bringing her extensive expertise in HR business partnering, talent management, and organisational development to contribute to Mars’ human resources strategies and initiatives. Mars, a renowned American multinational company known for its confectionery, pet food, and food products, is also a leading provider of animal care services.

Before joining Mars, Kavitha served as a senior manager- HRBP, BrowserStack for two years. Her significant tenure was with Alcon, where she worked for six years as a senior human resources business partner. During her time at Alcon, she played a crucial role in establishing Alcon’s global business services in Bangalore, working closely with functional and site leaders to build the right culture, processes, and policies from scratch.

Kavitha’s journey at Alcon began as an HR business partner for vision care and phaco development, overseeing various HR responsibilities such as business partnering, people processes, leadership coaching, culture-building, organisational restructuring, succession planning, performance management, and compensation planning for the consumer business and phaco development teams. She then advanced to the role of manager – HR business partner and talent management, where she led talent management, organisational development, and HR business partnering for Alcon India’s vision care franchise, technical services, and phaco development teams. Additionally, she served as the presiding officer for the prevention of sexual harassment committee.

Prior to her tenure at Alcon, Kavitha worked as the university relations manager at Texas Instruments for two years. She has also gained valuable experience through internships at Johnson & Johnson, Fidelity Investments, Wipro Infotech, Videojet Technologies, and Merck. Kavitha began her career as a senior software engineer at Larsen & Toubro Infotech in 2007. She holds a master’s degree in human resources from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences and a bachelor of technology degree from the University of Calicut.