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By Chabadinfo Reporter

Rabbi Yitzchak Kesselman, a Lubavitcher Chossid residing in Crown Heights, who is the highest ranking frum employee at Microsoft, was promoted to Corporate Vice President of Messaging and Real-Time Analytics Platform at the company.

Kesselman specializes in enterprise software and leads Microsoft’s “real-time data analytics” sector through a management product called Fabric. This software enables even non-technical employees to extract meaningful insights from massive datasets. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella highlighted the product’s significance at the company’s conference in May, describing it as a tool that will “fuel the next generation of AI services.”

R’ Kesselman wrote on LinkedIn about the promotion:

“I’m incredibly honored to step into a new role as Corporate Vice President, Messaging and Real-Time Analytics. This journey has been nothing short of amazing, and I owe a huge thank you to the incredible teams, mentors, and colleagues who have supported, challenged, and inspired me along the way. Special thanks to Arun Ulag and Scott Guthrie for their mentorship and partnership over the years.

“It’s amazing to think that our team came together less than two years ago, given everything we’ve been able to achieve so far. Working alongside such a talented group has been a privilege—and the best part? We’re just getting started! Excited for what’s ahead.

“Here’s to the next chapter!”

***

Two years ago, Kesselman said in an interview with Globes magazine, “I have never seen any dissonance between my work and my faith. There is a reason we have a physical body. We have a purpose to do good in the world. Every time we build technologies that really succeed in helping people, I am filled with a sense of meaning.”

Born in Riga, Latvia, the 39-year-old father of five immigrated to Israel with his parents at age 6. He grew up in Ramla and says he was drawn to technology at a young age, infatuated by computers and software in elementary school. He became religious at high school in Tel Aviv, after which he enrolled in the pre-army Atuda academic program. “In the mornings I studied calculus and data structure at Tel Aviv University, and in the evenings I studied Gemara and Chassidus at Yeshiva.” After completing a bachelor’s degree in computer science, he served as an officer in the computing unit of the IDF Intelligence Corps.

Kesselman became one of the first frum employees at Microsoft Israel and one of the leaders in the integration of the frum population into the tech giant. He joined Microsoft a decade ago and currently manages a division of 400 employees worldwide. Early in his career, he was a development director at Retalix (a retail data company), where he managed a relatively large team. He joined Microsoft in 2013 as product manager. He left Microsoft in 2021 to become director of monitoring at Google and, in May 2023, returned to Microsoft to become a vice president.

A few years ago, he and his family relocated to New York. “A few months after the relocation, during an online meeting with a large client, we were asked to schedule a follow-up meeting for Friday. My manager put the call on mute, and asked me when Shabbos was coming in, so I wouldn’t have to feel uncomfortable.”

Kesselman has been among those pushing for the integration of men and women from charedi society at Microsoft. “We invited candidates for job interviews whose dry data did not exactly match the common pattern of the average tech employee and we saw that a high percentage of them passed the interviews and were accepted,” Kesselman says about the project. However, he clarifies, “It is important to note that it is not that we lowered the bar, but only removed some of the barriers that got in the way. With the time and experience I have gained, I have learned that accepting the other does not come at the expense of professionalism, but the opposite. I truly believe and hope that this can be our starting point to create a better world.”

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