PLACE OF BIRTH: HYDERABAD, INDIA
TITLE: CEO, MICROSOFT
IMPACT: SATYA NADELLA GREW UP IN INDIA, WHERE HE RECEIVED HIS UNDERGRAD DEGREE BEFORE MOVING TO THE U.S. to pursue an MS in computer science from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. After graduating in 1990, he joined Sun Microsystems but left for Microsoft in 1992. For the next two and a half years, Nadella spent weekdays working in Redmond, Wash., and weekends at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business pursuing his MBA. Nadella worked across departments in his first 22 years at Microsoft, and he was leading its cloud and enterprise group when he was tapped to replace Steve Ballmer as CEO in 2014. The Microsoft board’s CEO search had been long and arduous before selecting Nadella, a relative unknown outside the company. But his track record growing Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing program proved he could take the company in new directions. Recently, that meant the high-profile $26.2 billion purchase of LinkedIn, the largest acquisition in Microsoft’s history.
TITLE: CEO, MICROSOFT
IMPACT: SATYA NADELLA GREW UP IN INDIA, WHERE HE RECEIVED HIS UNDERGRAD DEGREE BEFORE MOVING TO THE U.S. to pursue an MS in computer science from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. After graduating in 1990, he joined Sun Microsystems but left for Microsoft in 1992. For the next two and a half years, Nadella spent weekdays working in Redmond, Wash., and weekends at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business pursuing his MBA. Nadella worked across departments in his first 22 years at Microsoft, and he was leading its cloud and enterprise group when he was tapped to replace Steve Ballmer as CEO in 2014. The Microsoft board’s CEO search had been long and arduous before selecting Nadella, a relative unknown outside the company. But his track record growing Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing program proved he could take the company in new directions. Recently, that meant the high-profile $26.2 billion purchase of LinkedIn, the largest acquisition in Microsoft’s history.
Photo courtesy of Microsoft
