Steve Ballmer

The chief executive officer of Microsoft. Ballmer was born in Detroit, Michigan to a Swiss American father and a Jewish American mother. He grew up in the affluent community of Farmington Hills, Michigan. In 1973, he attended college prep and engineering classes at Lawrence Technological University and graduated from Detroit Country Day School, a private college preparatory school in Beverly Hills, Michigan and now sits on its board of directors. In 1977, he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a A.B. in mathematics and economics. At 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, who later became CEO of General Electric.[5] In 1980, he dropped out of the Stanford Graduate School of Business to join Microsoft.