Steve Ballmer

Steve Ballmer was born March 24, 1956 in Detroit, Michigan to a Jewish mother and a Swiss-American father. He spent most of his childhood in Farmington Hills, Michigan, and he graduated from Detroit County Day School in 1973. In 1977, he graduated with high honors from Harvard, earning a BA in economics and mathematics. During college, he managed the school's football team, worked on its newspaper and the Harvard Advocate, and lived a few doors down from future Microsoft head Bill Gates.

Steve BallmerBallmer worked for two years as a product manager for Procter & Gamble; he shared office space with Jeffrey Immelt, the future General Electric CEO. He dropped out of Stanford's Graduate School of Business in 1980 to join Bill Gates' company Microsoft. He was the company's 30th employee, and Gates' first business manager. He loved to work at Microsoft, having been offered an initial salary of $50,000 and a share of the company. When Microsoft became incorporated in 1981, Ballmer had an 8% interest in the company; he has headed up several divisions including sales and support, operations and OS development.

In the beginning of 2000, Ballmer was named CEO of Microsoft. In that position, Ballmer has been responsible for the company's finances, but Gates is still the one with the technical vision. Ballmer sold most (8.3%) of his stock in Microsoft, leaving him with a 4% stake. That year, he did away with Microsoft's stock option plan, and in 2009, he made the keynote speech at CES, as Bill Gates had ended his time as chairman.