Satya Narayana Nadella, a business executive originally from India, became the CEO of Microsoft, a computer software company, in 2014 and has held the position since then. He was born in Hyderabad, India, on August 19, 1967.
Having grown up in Hyderabad, a city in southern India, Satya Nadella pursued a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Mangalore University, which he completed in 1988. Later, he moved to the United States where he obtained a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee in 1990. He joined Sun Microsystems, Inc. and worked as a member of its technology staff for a brief period before joining Microsoft in 1992. His initial work at Microsoft was focused on the development of Windows NT, an operating system that had a significant impact on business users. While working at Microsoft, Nadella pursued a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Chicago, which he completed in 1997.
Nadella’s ascent through the ranks of Microsoft’s management was gradual and steady. In 1999, he was appointed as the vice president of Microsoft’s bCentral small-business service. Two years later, he became the corporate vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions. In 2007, he was promoted to senior vice president of research and development for the company’s online services division. From 2011 to 2013, he served as the president of Microsoft’s server and tools business, which generated an annual revenue of around $19 billion. Additionally, he was the executive vice president responsible for the company’s cloud computing platform that provided infrastructure for Microsoft’s offerings, including the Office 365 subscription-based services, the Xbox Live broadband gaming network, and the online search engine Bing.
On February 4, 2014, Nadella assumed the role of CEO of Microsoft, making him the third person to hold the position in the company’s history of almost 40 years, after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. One of his early responsibilities was to oversee the finalization of Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia Corp.’s mobile-device business, which was announced in 2013 despite the objections of several Microsoft executives, including Nadella, according to reports. Following the completion of the deal in April 2014, Nadella announced the company’s biggest layoff ever, which involved cutting 18,000 jobs, primarily in Nokia. In 2016, he supervised Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn, a social networking website for professionals.
Nadella collaborated with Greg Shaw and Jill Tracie Nichols to co-author “Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone” in 2017. The book not only featured a discussion of his life but also included his insights on technology and leadership.
Overall, Satya Nadella’s success story is a testament to his vision, leadership, and ability to transform a large and complex organization like Microsoft.
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