Satya Nadella: The Cloud Creator

In the initial days of his career, Nadella worked with ‘Sun Microsystems’. Then in 1992, he joined ‘Microsoft’ where he led major projects, including the company's move to cloud computing and the development of one of the largest cloud infrastructures in the world. He was announced the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Microsoft in 2014.

Satya Nadella was born on 19, August 1967 in a Telugu family. His mother Prabhavati was a Sanskrit lecturer and father Bukkapuram Nadella Yugandhar an IAS officer. Nadella has always been an optimistic person who had aspirations to build things, which he accepts and says, “I always knew I wanted to build things.”

He completed his schooling from Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet, and received his bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the Manipal Institute of Technology in Karnataka in 1988. He went to the US to study masters of Science at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and later he completed an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

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In the initial days of his career, Nadella worked with ‘Sun Microsystems’. Then in 1992, he joined ‘Microsoft’ where he led major projects, including the company's move to cloud computing and the development of one of the largest cloud infrastructures in the world. He was announced the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Microsoft in 2014.

He was a ‘Time 100 honoree’ in 2018, was named Financial Times’s Person of the year and Fortune Magazine’s Businessperson of the Year in 2019. He was recognized as Global Indian Business Icon at CNBC-TV18’s India Business leader Awards in Mumbai in 2020.

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He authored a book in 2017 with the title, ‘Hit Refresh: The quest to rediscover Microsoft's soul and imagine a better future for everyone.’ With his book, Nadella wanted to inspire people to discover empathy in their own lives. According to him, his wife, Anupama, helped him learn this quality when their son was born with severe disabilities 24 years ago.

He believes that his book, ‘Hit Refresh’ is the perfect metaphor for all three storylines of the book, his journey so far, the company’s ongoing transformation, and the coming wave of technological and economic change. Nadella says that he was quite impressed to see how his mother would perfectly balance between her personal and professional life. This made him a man who looks up to a woman, his mother, wife, daughters, Microsoft colleagues, and so many others, for the lessons in life.

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