Microsoft Appoints President Brad Smith as Vice Chairman

On Sept. 14, Microsoft appointed company President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith as Vice Chairman. Smith will continue to report to Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella. What’s Smith’s net worth and how did he rise to the top?

The appointment comes after a quarter of a century of contributions to the technology giant, including dealing with antitrust concerns raised by regulators.

In fiscal 2020, Smith’s total compensation fell almost 4 percent to about $16.7 million. In 2020, the tech behemoth lost its effort to split TikTok from its Chinese owner ByteDance and dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic. Smith’s fiscal 2020 remuneration includes $860,000 in salary, almost $3.3 million in non-equity incentives, and $12.4 million in stock awards.

Smith attended Appleton West High School in Appleton, Wisc., where he worked as president of the student body and editor of the school paper. Smith earned a B.A. in 1981 from Princeton University and he continued to Columbia Law School. He studied international law at the University of Geneva in Switzerland from 1983 to 1984 before returning to Columbia to complete his degree in 1985.

After graduation, Smith worked as a law clerk for U.S. federal judge Charles Miller Metzner. He joined the legal firm Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. in 1986. Smith spent three years in Washington, D.C., and four years in London, where he ran Covington's software practice. He had become a partner in Covington by 1993.

Smith started working for Microsoft in 1993. He managed its Legal and Corporate Affairs division in Europe for three years. Then, he spent five years as deputy general counsel until he was appointed general counsel and senior vice president in 2002. As Microsoft’s general counsel, Smith served as a lawyer, politician, and diplomat.

In 2015, Smith became the president of Microsoft and joined the board of directors of Netflix. Smith has been working on resolving Microsoft’s antitrust issues globally and has helped guide the firm away from the new wave of regulatory review faced by competitors Alphabet and Amazon.

In the past few years, Smith has overseen policy, government, and legal issues at Microsoft, including relations with overseas governments including China, political donations, and plans to expand rural broadband services. Smith is also a vocal representative of Microsoft’s views on data privacy, voting rights, and immigration, among other issues.

According to Wallmine, Smith’s net worth was about $320 million as of May 10, 2021. Smith holds more than $200 million in Microsoft stock.

Smith was born on January 17, 1959, in Milwaukee, Wisc. He is 62 years old as of 2021. Smith’s father was an engineer and manager at Wisconsin Bell. His father relocated the family numerous times across the state.

Smith married Kathy Surace-Smith in 1983. The couple met at Princeton University while they were both undergraduates. Kathy is the vice president and general counsel of Seattle-based biotechnology company NanoString Technologies. The couple has a son who was born in 1992 and a daughter who was born in 1995.