Brad Smith Biography
Brad Smith, born Bradford Lee Smith is an American attorney and technology executive presently serving as President of Microsoft, concurrently serving as a chief legal officer.
Smith has settled multi-billion-dollar proceedings with other businesses and the European Union on behalf of Microsoft, lodged numerous lawsuits against the U.S. government to safeguard customer privacy, led attempts to introduce broadband and technology employment to rural America, and signed alliances with the United Nations Human Rights Office. He’s been leading philanthropic immigration and education initiatives. Smith was named one of America’s most important attorneys.
10 Quick Facts About Brad Smith
- Name: Brad Smith
- Age: 63 years
- Birthday: January 17
- Zodiac Sign: Capricorn
- Height: Average
- Nationality: American
- Occupation: Attorney and Technology Executive
- Marital Status: Married
- Salary: Under Review
- Net worth: $142 Million
Brad Smith Age
The American lawyer was born on January 17, 1959, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin United States. He is 63 years old as of 2022. He is an American by nationality and he belongs to white ethnicity.
Brad Smith Family
Smith was born to American parents. His father was an engineer and manager at Wisconsin Bell and moved the family around the state several times.
Brad Smith Wife | Brad Smith Children
Smith is a married man. He is married to Kathy Surace-Smith. The couple met while they were undergraduates at Princeton University. They graduated in 1981 and continued to Columbia Law School together. They got married in 1983, and spent the school year of 1983-1984 studying international law at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, before returning to Columbia to graduate in 1985. Kathy is the vice president and general counsel of Seattle biotech company NanoString Technologies. They have a son, born in 1992, and a daughter born in 1995.
Brad Smith Education
Smith graduated from Appleton West High School in Appleton, Wisconsin, where he was student body president and editor of the school paper; while class president, he brokered one of his first deals, a school hall pass system. He then joined Princeton University and he graduated in 1981 and he continued to Colombia law school. In 1983-84, he studied international law at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, before returning to Columbia to graduate in 1985.
Brad Smith Career
After graduation, Smith’s first task was as law clerk to federal judge Charles Miller Metzner of the United States. He entered the Washington, D.C. in 1986. Covington & Burling law firms. For the job, he had one condition: having his own personal computer. He was the company’s first individual with one; Microsoft Word version 1.0 was running. Smith worked in Washington D.C. for three years, and four in London, operating the software practice of Covington there. He became a partner by 1993.
In 1993, Smith entered Microsoft. He resulted his legal and corporate affairs team in Europe for three years, then as deputy general counsel for five years, before being appointed general counsel in 2002. Smith worked as a lawyer, politician, and diplomat as the general counsel for Microsoft. Microsoft had just settled the U.S. v. Microsoft Corp. in 2001, a four-year antitrust fightabout bundling the Internet Explorer web browser with the Microsoft Windows operating system.
Smith’s late 2001 work request included a PowerPoint presentation of a single slide saying: “time to create peace.” Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and CEO Steve Ballmer agreed. Smith was defined as being compatible with rivals and regulators. He resulted negotiations to settle cases with several of Microsoft’s rivals, including AOL Time-Warner, Sun Microsystems, and Be Inc., paying plaintiffs $5 billion, seeking win – win resolutions, and winning prizes from their chief counsel. Smith also oversaw negotiations on antitrust charges with the European Commission, meeting overseas leaders, lobbying, and settling most problems in 2010.
As Microsoft president, Smith continued to be called a a leader of the tech industry on privacy and immigration. He requested an exception to his travel ban from the Trump administration and said that Microsoft would protect its staff impacted by the revocation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. In February 2017, at the RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco, Smith called for a “digital Geneva convention,” reiterated his suggestion after the WannaCry ransomware attack believed to come from the North Korean government, and presented the idea to the United Nations in Geneva in November 2017.
The convention would be an international treaty regulating state-sponsored cyberwarfare, protecting civilian infrastructure, and ensuring technology companies ‘ neutrality, to be supervised by an global body modeled after the International Atomic Energy Agency or the Red Cross to monitor the treaty and recognize perpetrators. He also entered into a partnership with Microsoft in 2017 with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, which the Office called “groundbreaking” and “landmark,” donating $5 million over five years to create technology to promote the human rights job of the Office.
He led Microsoft into two ambitious projects to introduce technology to rural America, the Rural Airband Initiative, which would bring broadband Internet access to 12 countries by 2022 using unused TV channel frequencies, and the TechSpark program to invest in technology employment in six rural and lower metropolitan areas, beginning with North Dakota and Wisconsin.
In 2014, Smith was named to the Board of Trustees of Princeton University for a four-year term. He has been on the Code.org board of directors since 2013, the year it was founded, and on the Netflix board of directors since 2015. From 2016 to 2017, Smith served on the U.S. Commerce Department’s Digital Economy Board of Advisors.
Smith chairs Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), a non-profit organization he co-founded in 2008 with actress Angelina Jolie. KIND offers free legal pro bono assistance to unaccompanied immigrant kids facing deportation in eight of the biggest towns in the United States. It is financed by Microsoft and donated hours throughout the nation from law firms and corporate departments. He is also involved with other charity works with his wife.
Brad Smith Net Worth And Salary
The estimated Net Worth of Bradford L Smith is at least $142 Million dollars as of 30 April 2019. Mr. Smith owns over 192,300 units of Microsoft stock worth over $103,328,376 and over the last 4 years, he sold MSFT stock worth over $25,064,382. In addition, he makes $13,511,600 as President and Chief Legal Officer at Microsoft.
Brad Smith Contacts
- Youtube
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- Website
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