Huge tech strikes as we speak from Microsoft: Longtime government Julia Liuson is leaving, Neil Barnett is the corporate’s new chief accessibility officer, and Nanda Ramachandran has been named chief advertising and marketing officer for Home windows & Units.
They’re a part of a broader wave of government departures and adjustments at Microsoft as CEO Satya Nadella appears to flatten the corporate’s reporting construction and regulate to the brand new realities of AI in its product growth and advertising and marketing.
— Liuson is departing after greater than 34 years with the Redmond, Wash. tech large, efficient in June, a number of information retailers report.
In response to her LinkedIn profile, Liuson has been president since 2021 of Microsoft’s Developer Division, which incorporates Microsoft Azure providers for builders, Visible Studio and the .NET Framework. The division has advanced to combine with GitHub, which the corporate acquired in 2018.
Liuson joined Microsoft in 1992 as a software program design engineer after graduating from the College of Washington. A firm biography states she was the primary lady promoted to company vice chairman of growth at Microsoft.
An organization spokesperson referred to as Liuson’s departure “a considerate, deliberate resolution to retire from her full-time function and step into her subsequent chapter,” including that she is going to work full-time via June after which transition into an advisory function.
“We’re grateful for the affect Julia and the broader crew have delivered for builders and clients, and we’re targeted on sustaining momentum as we head into the subsequent fiscal yr and past. Our developer and AI technique — and our dedication to clients — stay unchanged,” the spokesperson mentioned.
Liuson will proceed reporting to Microsoft CoreAI chief Jay Parikh in her advisory function, The Verge reported, citing an inside memo. A substitute for Liuson has not been publicly named.
Microsoft in recent times has been aggressively recruiting AI leaders from Google DeepMind, Allen Institute for AI, Meta and elsewhere to bolster its AI applied sciences. That features Parikh, who joined in 2024 from Lacework and was beforehand at Meta.
— In his new function, Barnett will lead Microsoft’s accessibility efforts inside its Company, Exterior & Authorized Affairs group.
Barnett has been with the corporate since 2001 and 12 years in the past grew to become the chief of a crew targeted on on-line security, privateness and accessibility assist.
He succeeds Jenny Lay-Flurrie within the function.
“Neil brings a uncommon mixture of unwavering advocacy, sturdy operational and folks management mixed with readability, conviction, and function,” Lay-Flurrie mentioned on LinkedIn. Over the previous decade, he constructed and scaled the corporate’s neurodiversity program and Incapacity Reply Desk, which has supported greater than two million clients.
— Lay-Flurrie, who has been with Microsoft for greater than 21 years, moved into her new function in February as head of the Trusted Expertise Group. This division addresses accessibility, digital security, privateness, accountable AI, enterprise resilience, and accountable enterprise practices. (See extra GeekWire protection of Lay-Flurrie’s new function.)
— Ramachandran joins Microsoft from Google, the place for the previous 12 years he was vice chairman of Pixel Enterprise, which incorporates telephones, tablets, laptops and different units. Ramachandran relies within the San Francisco Bay Space and beforehand held management roles at Samsung Cell and Motorola.
As the brand new CMO of Home windows & Units, he shared his pleasure to construct {hardware} together with Microsoft’s Floor computer systems and rising Home windows.
“We’re transitioning into the subsequent part of computing, and serving to steer Home windows and our units into the period of the agentic OS is an unbelievable alternative,” he mentioned on LinkedIn.
