Kya Sainsbury-Carter

Kya Sainsbury-Carter leads the advertising team at Microsoft and is responsible for building and scaling Microsoft’s search, native, display, video, retail media and partnership offerings with more than $18 billion in annual revenue. With employees around the globe, the Microsoft Advertising team under Kya empowers monetization for Microsoft, key partners and the open web.

Kya has been with Microsoft for more than 16 years, all in the advertising business. She has played a number of leadership roles across Sales, Strategy, Operations, and Partner Management functions and across all channels and customer segments. Kya has built her brand on bridging from strategy to execution, synthesizing the complex into the actionable, high impact collaboration, and servant leadership. In recent years, in her role as VP of Global Partner Sales, Kya led the transition of Strategic Search Sales back from Yahoo, built up the 3P business in partnership with BD and Engineering, served as the business lead on the Xandr and Netflix deals, and has played a leadership role in Microsoft’s LGBTQ+ employee resource groups. Kya is a passionate people leader, known for cultivating productive and trust-based relationships, and for bringing humor and kind, direct communications to all she does.

Prior to Microsoft, Kya held roles in client service, product management, and ecommerce and was involved in the early days of what is now known as cloud computing. Kya also worked as a financial analyst and a restaurant manager. She remains a committed Deadhead and a passionate international traveler. Today, she lives in Bellevue, WA with her husband of 25 years, Neil. Kya is the proud mama of two beautiful, kind, smart sons – Mason (21) and Burch (18). She earned her MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management and her undergraduate degree from University of Arkansas.