'Perfect Next Chapter': Indian-Origin Techie Leaves Meta For OpenAI, Goes Viral

Chaya Nayak, an Indian origin AI specialist who worked at Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta(formerly Facebook) for almost nine years, has resigned from the social media giant (Meta) to work at OpenAI as a part of its 'Special Initiatives' team. She will work with Irina Kofman, Head of the Special Initiatives team, a move Nayak described as the "perfect next chapter" to exploring strategic opportunities in artificial intelligence. She shared the news in a LinkedIn post that has now gone viral.

Who is Chaya Nayak?

Chaya Nayak did an undergraduate degree in Global Studies - Security, Peace Studies, Spanish from the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. Later on, she did her Master's program in Public Policy and Data Science from the University of California, Berkeley. 

Her early career involved a diversity of roles. In 2010, she began as a Project Manager at Pathways to Empowerment in Pune, India, and then moved to the U.S. where she worked as a Geographic Information Specialist for the City of Milwaukee's Office of Environmental Sustainability.

She served as a consultant at The Ergo Group and the Institute for the Future, and then later as a Head Graduate Student Instructor at the University of California, Berkeley. Later, she focused on data-driven and social impact projects, serving in roles at Samasource, where she directed vendor teams in India and Africa, and at Quid and Premise Data, where she leveraged data to generate market insights and work on social responsibility goals.

At Meta, she began as the Head of Data for Good initiative (October 2016 - June 2018), focusing on using AI and data for social impact. From June 2018 - May 2023, she then led the Facebook Open Research and Transparency (FORT) team, where she developed data-sharing frameworks to enable independent research on the company's impact on elections and democracy and contributed to research around critical events like the 2020 US elections.

Before she resigned, she was the Director of Product Management for Generative AI from May 2023 - August 2025, overseeing the development of three generations of Llama models and the launch of Meta AI. She reflected on her nearly decade-long journey at Meta, describing it as "the most pivotal experience of her life.”

I remember my first weeks at Facebook like they were yesterday. I joined to help jumpstart Data for Good, an effort to show how data and AI/ML could benefit the world. What started as a bold experiment grew into the foundation of my career.What I didn’t know then was that those first weeks would turn into nearly a decade of the most pivotal experiences of my life.

Her departure from Meta is part of a wider trend of high-profile AI experts, such as Avi Verma and Rishabh Agarwal, leaving the company. In her LinkedIn post, she said, “The journey isn't over, I’m just turning the page,” adding, " I couldn't be more excited for what's ahead."