Steve Ballmer Biography
Michigan born Steve Ballmer is an American businessman, investor and philanthropist who was the chief executive officer of Microsoft from January 2000 to February 2014, and is the current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA).Steve as of January 2018, his personal wealth is estimated at US$38.7 billion, ranking him the 21st richest person in the world.
He was hired by Bill Gates at Microsoft in 1980 after dropping out of Stanford University. Steve later he became President in 1998, and replaced Gates as CEO in 2000. Ballmer on February 4, 2014, he retired as CEO and was succeeded by Satya Nadella; Ballmer resigned from the Board of Directors on August 19, 2014 to prepare for teaching a new class.
Ballmer placed a bid of $2 billion to purchase the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers after NBA commissioner Adam Silver forced Donald Sterling to sell the team on May 29, 2014. Ballmer officially became the Clippers owner on August 12, 2014; Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is a fellow owner in the NBA, having owned the Portland Trail Blazers since 1988.
Ballmer’s time as Microsoft CEO has been seen as mixed, with critics noting the company’s tripling of sales and doubling of profits, but losing its market dominance and missing out on 21st century technology trends.
Steve Ballmer Education
Ballmer lived in Brussels for three years in 1964, where he attended the International School of Brussels. In 1973, Ballmer attended college prep and engineering classes at Lawrence Technological University. Ballmer later graduated valedictorian from Detroit Country Day School, a private college preparatory school in Beverly Hills, Michigan, with a score of 800 on the mathematical section of the SAT and was a National Merit Scholar. He currently sits on the school’s board of directors. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a B.A. in applied mathematics and economics in 1977.
While at college, Ballmer served as a manager for the Harvard Crimson football team and a member of the Fox Club, worked on The Harvard Crimson newspaper as well as the Harvard Advocate, and lived down the hall from fellow sophomore Bill Gates. Ballmer scored highly in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, an exam sponsored by the Mathematical Association of America, scoring higher than Bill Gates. He also worked as an assistant product manager at Procter & Gamble for two years, where he shared an office with Jeffrey R. Immelt, who later became CEO of General Electric. In 1980 this is when he dropped out of the Stanford Graduate School of Business to join Microsoft.
