Steve Ballmer biography

Steven Anthony Ballmer (born March 24, 1956) is an American businessman and has been the chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation since January 2000.[1] Ballmer is the second person after Roberto Goizueta to become a billionaire in U.S. dollars based on stock options received as an employee of a corporation in which he was neither a founder nor a relative of a founder. In Forbes 2008 World's Richest People ranking, Ballmer was ranked the 43rd richest person in the world, with an estimated wealth of $15 billion.

On October 2, 2006, Ballmer was awarded honorary citizenship of Lausen, Switzerland. His father, Frederick Ballmer, who emigrated to the US at the age of 23 as "Hans Friedrich Balmer", was a citizen of the same municipality.[2] His father worked as a manager at Ford Motor Co. In 1990 Ballmer married Connie Snyder, on Microsoft's PR team at the Waggener Group in the '80s. They have two sons.

Steve Ballmer was born March 24, 1956 and grew up in Farmington Hills, Michigan to a Swiss father and a Jewish-American mother. In 1973, he graduated from Detroit Country Day School, a high school, and now sits on its board of directors.[3] In 1977, he graduated from Harvard University [4] with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and economics. While in college, Ballmer managed the football team, worked on the Harvard Crimson newspaper as well as the Harvard Advocate, and lived down the hall from fellow sophomore Bill Gates. He then worked for two years as an assistant product manager at Procter & Gamble, where he shared an office with Jeffrey R. Immelt, the current CEO of General Electric.[5] In 1980, he dropped out from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.[6]