Steve Ballmer

He married Connie Snyder in 1990. They have three sons.

Both Ballmer and his wife are active on the philanthropic front and were reported to have donated $50 million to the University of Oregon in 2014.

Steve Ballmer was born on March 24, 1956, in Detroit, to Beatrice Dworkin and Frederic Henry Ballmer. He has a sister, Shelly. His father was a manager at the Ford Motor Company and his family was an affluent one. Ballmer is of Swiss and Jewish ethnicity.

He attended the Detroit Country Day School on a scholarship and graduated with a perfect score of 800 on the mathematical section of the SAT. Then he enrolled at Harvard College from where he graduated magna cum laude with an A.B. in applied mathematics and economics, in 1977. While studying there he became friends with Bill Gates, a fellow student.

Ballmer loved sports and was a manager for the Harvard Crimson football team. He also worked on The Harvard Crimson newspaper as well as the Harvard Advocate.

After completing his education he joined Procter & Gamble as an assistant product manager, a post he held for two years. Then he joined the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1979.

Ballmer’s college friend Bill Gates had dropped out of school to co-found Microsoft. After completing his first year at the business school, Ballmer approached his friend hoping for a summer job at his company. Gates instead asked Ballmer to take a full-time job managing the company's operations.

In 1980, Ballmer left the Stanford Graduate School of Business and joined Microsoft in June, becoming the first business manager to be hired by Gates. One of his earliest roles was to recruit competent employees for the growing firm. Despite not being a programmer himself, Ballmer possessed the knack to identify potential talent.

Soon after, Microsoft signed a contract to create an operating system for IBM’s new line of personal computers. The co-founders of the company, Gates and his partner Paul Allen, busied themselves with the technical aspects of the company while Ballmer was assigned the responsibility of handling the business.

Ballmer reorganized Microsoft’s partnership into a corporate structure in 1981 after the company was incorporated. Accordingly, Gates came to hold 53 percent of the equity, Allen 35 percent, and Ballmer 8 percent. He also developed a stock option plan for the employees.

Steve Ballmer was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor in Paris by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.