Chris Capossela

Last updated
Chris Capossela
Chris capossela.jpg
Chris Capossela in 2018
Born1969
Boston, Massachusetts
Alma mater Harvard University
OccupationMarketing executive
Children2

Chris Capossela (born 1969) is a former Microsoft executive who was its Chief Marketing Officer for nearly all of the period from 2011 to 2023. [1] [2] Capossela's career at Microsoft includes roles as Bill Gates' speech assistant, Corporate Vice President of the Consumer Channels Group and marketing leadership of the company's Microsoft Office group. [3] He also serves as Board Chair of the nonprofit Worldreader. [4]

Contents

Education and career

Capossela graduated from Harvard University in 1991 with a B.A. in economics. [5] He joined Microsoft immediately after graduating, moving from his hometown of Boston to Seattle, WA. [6]

In 1997, Capossela was selected for a two-year assignment as Speech Assistant to Microsoft CEO Bill Gates. [7] In 1998, Capossela was demonstrating Windows 98 plug and play on stage with Gates at the COMDEX Conference when the computer became unresponsive and displayed the Blue Screen of Death. [3] In 1999, Capossela relocated to Paris to lead business operations for Microsoft's Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, before returning to Redmond in 2001 to assume leadership of Microsoft Project. [8] Capossela was promoted to Corporate Vice President of the Microsoft Office division in 2003, a role he held until 2011, when he took on leadership of Microsoft's Consumer Channels Group. [9]

In 2014, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella promoted Capossela to Chief Marketing Officer, overseeing marketing across consumer and commercial audiences for all Microsoft services and products, corporate communications, brand, advertising and research. [10] Capossela took over the role from his predecessor Mich Mathews. [11] In 2016, Microsoft consolidated its marketing and consumer sales organizations into the Marketing and Consumer Business group, adding business growth for consumer and device sales, Microsoft Advertising business and Microsoft Stores to Capossela's responsibilities. [12]

Personal life

Capossela was born and raised in Boston's North End.[ citation needed ] He worked alongside his two brothers, mother and father at his family's Italian restaurant. [3] His family lived in an apartment above the restaurant. Capossela began attending Harvard in nearby Cambridge, MA, in 1987. Capossela, his wife and two daughters live in Seattle, Washington. [13] Capossela is a board member for a 501(c)(3) global non-profit called Worldreader, an organization that provides people in the developing world with free access to a library of digital books via e-readers and mobile phones. [4]

Related Research Articles

Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue for its developer by automatically generating online advertisements in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the user during the installation process. The software may generate two types of revenue: one is for the display of the advertisement and another on a "pay-per-click" basis, if the user clicks on the advertisement. Some advertisements also act as spyware, collecting and reporting data about the user, to be sold or used for targeted advertising or user profiling. The software may implement advertisements in a variety of ways, including a static box display, a banner display, a full screen, a video, a pop-up ad or in some other form. All forms of advertising carry health, ethical, privacy and security risks for users.

A chief marketing officer (CMO), also called a global marketing officer or marketing director, or chief brand officer, is a corporate executive responsible for managing marketing activities in an organization. Whilst historically these titles may have signified a legal responsibility, for example at Companies House in the UK, the titles are less strict/formal in the 21st Century and allow companies to acknowledge the evolving and increasingly significant role that marketers can play in an organisation, not least because of the inherent character of successful marketers. The CMO leads brand management, marketing communications, market research, product marketing, distribution channel management, pricing, customer success, and customer service.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">B. Kevin Turner</span> American businessman and investor (born 1965)

B. Kevin Turner is an American businessman and investor who is the chairman of Zayo Group and the vice chairman of Albertsons/Safeway Inc.

Microsoft Advertising is an online advertising platform developed by Microsoft, where advertisers bid to display brief ads, service offers, product listings and videos to web users, it provides pay per click advertising on search engines Bing, Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo, as well as on other websites, mobile apps, and videos.

Microsoft engineering groups are the operating divisions of Microsoft. Starting in April 2002, Microsoft organised itself into seven groups, each an independent financial entity. In September 2005, Microsoft announced a reorganization of its then seven groups into three. In July 2013, Microsoft announced another reorganization into five engineering groups and six corporate affairs groups. A year later, in June 2015, Microsoft reformed into three engineering groups. In September 2016, a new group was created to focus on artificial intelligence and research. On March 29, 2018, a new structure merged all of these into three.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven Sinofsky</span>

Steven Jay Sinofsky is an American businessman and software engineer.

Kevin R. Johnson is an American businessman and software engineer who was the president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Starbucks Coffee Company from 2017 to 2022. Succeeding Howard Schultz as CEO, Johnson previously served as the company's president and chief operating officer from 2015 to 2017. On March 16, 2022, Johnson announced that he was stepping down as CEO, Schultz would take over as CEO in the interim. Johnson joined the board of directors of Goldman Sachs in late 2022.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elisa Steele</span>

Elisa Steele is the former chief executive officer at Namely. Prior to being appointed to the role in August 2018, Steele sat on the company’s board of directors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julie Larson-Green</span> American business executive (born 1962)

Julie Larson-Green is the former chief experience officer (CXO) of the Office Experience Organization at Microsoft, where she worked 1993 through 2017. She subsequently joined Qualtrics as their CXO.

VoloMetrix, Inc. is an American subsidiary of Microsoft based in Seattle, Washington. VoloMetrix sells people analytics software that combines data from collaboration platforms to create data visualizations and dashboards. At the end of April 2013, the company raised $3.3M in series A funding from Shasta Ventures. In October 2014, VoloMetrix announced a series B funding round with Shasta Ventures and Split Rock Partners that raised $12M. In September 2015, Microsoft announced that they had acquired the company, but did not disclose the amount. The acquisition was made to improve existing Microsoft offerings such as Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Delve.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bob Muglia</span> American business executive (born 1959)

Bob Muglia is an American business executive and research and development specialist. He was formerly the Chief Executive Officer of Snowflake Computing, a data warehousing startup. Muglia is known for managing divisions at Microsoft that supported the Microsoft Office Suite, Windows Server and MSN Network product families. He was one of four presidents that reported directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Meredith Kopit Levien is an American media executive who is the chief executive officer of The New York Times Company.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a set of enterprise accounting and sales software products offered by Microsoft. Its flagship product, Dynamics GP, was founded in 1981.

John Shewchuk is an American technologist and executive. Shewchuk is a Microsoft Technical Fellow, a position which he was chosen for by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. He is the Host of the Decoded Show. Shewchuk is the founder of the .NET Services team and he was responsible for creating Azure AD.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kevin Scott (computer scientist)</span> Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft

Kevin Scott serves as Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft. He was previously Senior Vice President of Engineering and Operations at LinkedIn from February 2011 to January 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kurt DelBene</span> American technology official (born 1960)

Kurt D. DelBene is an American business executive who serves as the assistant secretary for information and technology and CIO at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Before taking this role, he was an executive vice president at Microsoft. DelBene has also previously served as senior advisor to the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, appointed by President Obama to oversee the implementation and improvement of the Affordable Care Act, HealthCare.gov. Prior to that, he served in several leadership roles at Microsoft, including president of the Microsoft Office division from 2010–2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joanne Bradford</span>

Joanne Bradford is an American businesswoman and financial technology executive, currently the chief growth officer of MNTN.

Leslie Berland is the CMO of Verizon, as of December 2023. She was formerly the CMO of Peleton and Twitter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft 365</span> Subscription services offered by Microsoft

Microsoft 365 is a product family of productivity software, collaboration and cloud-based services owned by Microsoft. It encompasses online services such as Outlook.com, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, programs formerly marketed under the name Microsoft Office, enterprise products and services associated with these products such as Exchange Server, SharePoint, and Yammer. It also covers subscription plans encompassing these products, including those that include subscription-based licenses to desktop and mobile software, and hosted email and intranet services.

References

  1. ↑ "Meet Microsoft's New Head Of Marketing: Chris Capossela". TechCrunch . 2011-04-06. Retrieved 2018-06-08.
  2. ↑ Bishop, Todd (October 26, 2023). "Microsoft CMO Chris Capossela is leaving after 32 years, replaced by veteran exec Takeshi Numoto". GeekWire. Retrieved 2023-12-14.
  3. 1 2 3 Lai, Eric (2010-02-08). "The Grill: Microsoft's Chris Capossela". Computerworld . Retrieved 2018-06-08.
  4. 1 2 "Board Members". Worldreader . Retrieved 2018-06-08.
  5. ↑ Jackson, Joab (2011-04-06). "Microsoft Appoints New Marketing Chief". PCWorld . Retrieved 2018-06-08.
  6. ↑ Stiffler, Lisa (2018-06-21). "Working Geek: How Chris Capossela went from Bill Gates' speechwriter to Microsoft's chief marketer". Geekwire . Retrieved 2018-06-25.
  7. ↑ Egusa, Conrad (2011-04-06). "One-time Bill Gates assistant appointed new Microsoft marketing head". VentureBeat . Retrieved 2018-06-08.
  8. ↑ Goss, Madeline (2017-01-19). "Chris Capossela, CMO of Microsoft: Don't Plan Too Far Ahead". McCombs School of Business . Retrieved 2018-06-08.
  9. ↑ Foley, Mary Jo (2011-04-06). "Microsoft creates new consumer channels group to be headed by Chris Capossela". ZDNet . Retrieved 2018-06-08.
  10. ↑ Fineberg, Seth (2014-03-06). "Meet the Exec Now Driving Microsoft's $1.1 Billion Ad Budget". Advertising Age . Retrieved 2018-06-08.
  11. ↑ Jackson, Joab (2011-04-06). "Microsoft Appoints New Marketing Chief". CIO . Retrieved 2018-06-19.
  12. ↑ Foley, Mary Jo (2016-07-07). "Microsoft's latest reorg: Sales and Marketing to be integrated cross-company". ZDNet . Retrieved 2018-06-08.
  13. ↑ "Chris Capossela - Official biography". Microsoft. Retrieved 2018-06-08.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.