Satya Nadella

He was widely criticized online, when his remark on hike of salaries for female employees came across as biased against women, at the ‘Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing’ event.

When he is not caught with his business commitments, Nadella likes to unwind by reading poetry. He is also really fond of cricket and attributes the sport as one of the reasons behind his leadership abilities.

Satya Nadella was born on 19 August 1967, in Hyderabad, India, to Bukkapuram Nadella Yugandher and Prabhavati Yugandhar. His father was a member of Indian Administrative Service

He pursued his primary education at the ‘Hyderabad Public School’, located in the Begumpet region of the city. He then moved to the prestigious ‘Manipal Institute of Technology’, located in the Manipal town of Karnataka.

In 1988, Nadella graduated from this renowned institution and was thinking of moving out of the country to pursue his higher studies. He then got admitted to the reputed ‘University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’ located in the United States to pursue his ‘Masters of Science’ (M.S) degree. He then graduated from the renowned university in 1990.

His desire to excel in the corporate world also motivated Nadella to move to one of the best business schools in the world, the ‘Booth School of Business’ affiliated to the ‘University of Chicago. He received a ‘Masters of Business Administration’ (MBA) degree from this prestigious institution.

After completing his education, Nadella joined the well-known firm ‘Sun Microsystems’. He worked in this company for a brief period and then moved to the Silicon-valley giant ‘Microsoft’, in 1992.

Nadella started climbing the corporate ladder steadily while working at ‘Microsoft’. He then went on to make important decisions in the interest of the firm.

He was one of the few employees who suggested the concept of cloud computing to the firm. Eventually the company dedicated lot of its time and resources to the development of this technology. The result was the germination of one of the world’s largest cloud based entities, named ‘Microsoft Azure’.

Satya was later given the responsibility to control the ‘Research & Development’ department, which belonged to the ‘Online Service Division’ and was even appointed as the senior vice-president of the same. He joined this department in 2007 and continued being a part of it for the next four years.

Nadella then moved to the Systems and Tools division of Microsoft and was even appointed its president. The annual turnover of Microsoft contributed by this segment of business alone is said to be around $20 Billion today.

One of Nadella’s greatest accomplishments was pioneering the ‘Cloud computing’ division of ‘Microsoft’. The annual turnover contributed by this division of the business was $16.6 Billion in 2011, when he was just appointed its head. In a matter of three years, the turnover saw a significant increase to around $20.6 Billion.