Mojgan Khalili

Mojgan’s passion for major public events was first sparked while following the Iranian hostage crisis as a child. Her family had immigrated to the U.S. from Iran, and Mojgan took a keen interest in the daily media coverage of this international crisis. Later, as she began her career, her appetite for world events extended to also encompass locally critical events in Silicon Valley. While still studying political science at San Jose State University, Mojgan was recruited to work on Santa Clara County’s largest public works project (the creation of highways 85 and 237). Before even graduating from college, she took on the difficult task of messaging the benefits of these new highways while recognizing the sacrifices of community members who lost their homes to make the project possible. After celebrating the highways’ completion with a big public event, Mojgan next served as press secretary for a local politician, and was subsequently recognized as Silicon Valley Business Journal’s “30 Under 30” Most Up and Coming Business, Political and Social Leaders in Silicon Valley. Eventually, Mojgan could no longer resist the allure of Silicon Valley’s technology industry, and made the switch from politics to NEC. At NEC and later Cisco, she became fluent in Silicon Valley speak, mastering the translation of technology for masses across the globe. Mojgan held a series of leadership roles at Cisco, honing her skills across every aspect of communications – from corporate, internal, crisis and security communications, to business-to-business and consumer public relations. She managed Strategic Communications for Cisco’s CEO council, which consisted of senior executives who led the company’s Products and Technology organization. In addition, she led content development for domestic and global markets and worked on both U.S. coasts for nearly a decade. Mojgan next looked for a role that would bring her back to her consumer roots and joined Yahoo!, where she drove all communications strategy and message development for the company’s product and technology organization. As vice president of communications, Mojgan led many of Yahoo!’s most successful and innovative thought-leadership, influencer/media relations and technology/product initiatives designed to articulate value to key internal and external audiences, especially consumers. Mojgan’s role as Operating Partner at Khosla Ventures is to bring her energy, her acutely unique intuition for all aspects of communications, and her aggregate experience in politics, enterprise technologies, Internet and consumers to the task of guiding the firm’s portfolio companies.