Satya Nadella, UWM grad and Microsoft chief, named CEO of the year

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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, a UW-Milwaukee alumnus, has been named CEO of the Year in what a Forbes columnist calls “the cloud wars.”

Nadella earned his master’s degree in computer science from UWM in 1990.

![](https://uwm.edu/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/41/2018/01/Nadella-250x300Satya-2017-08-31-22-250x300.jpg)Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

The Cloud Wars Top 10 is a weekly ranking system created by Forbes tech columnist Bob Evans to classify the large-scale tech companies that “are doing the best job of aligning their cloud technology to the rapidly evolving needs of businesses,” according to Evans’ Forbes.com biography.

[Evans cited Nadella’s success](https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobevans1/2018/01/10/the-tech-industry-ceo-of-the-year-microsofts-satya-nadella/#2459c29e6c62) in turning around a troubled Microsoft in the less than four years since Nadella was named CEO. Microsoft’s market cap has more than doubled in that time, and the company has been the top-rated enterprise-cloud vendor.

“And without question, the person most responsible for that extraordinary turnaround, transformation, rejuvenation, re-imagining, overhaul, restoration, resurrection, and near-miracle reversal is the eloquent and passionate Nadella,” Evans wrote.

After graduating from UWM, where he was also a graduate teaching assistant, Nadella moved to Chicago and pursued an MBA at the University of Chicago. He joined Microsoft in 1992 as a program manager and rose through the ranks. He visited UWM in 2013, when he was given the Chancellor’s Innovation Award.

Nadella [became Microsoft’s CEO](https://uwm.edu/news/uwm-alum-ms-ceo/) on Feb. 4, 2014, succeeding Steve Ballmer.

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