Brad Smith

Bradford L. Smith is an American attorney and technology executive, now president and chief legal officer of Microsoft

Born: 1959 , Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States
Spouse: Kathryn Surace-smith (m. 1983)
Employer: Microsoft Corporation
Education: Columbia Law School, Appleton West High School

Bradford L. Smith (born 1959) is an American attorney and technology executive, now president and chief legal officer of Microsoft. For Microsoft, he has settled multibillion-dollar lawsuits with other companies and the European Union, has filed multiple lawsuits against the United States government to protect customer privacy, led efforts to bring broadband and technology jobs to rural America, and signed partnerships with the United Nations Office on Human Rights. He has led philanthropic efforts on immigration and education. He has been called one of the most influential lawyers in America.

Smith was born in 1959 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His father was an engineer and manager at Wisconsin Bell and moved the family around the state several times. 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.
Smith met his wife Kathy Surace-Smith 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.[ Surace-Smith is vice president and general counsel of Seattle biotech company NanoString Technologies.They have a son, born in 1992, and a daughter born in 1995.

Smith's first job after graduation was as law clerk to United States federal judge Charles Miller Metzner. In 1986, he joined the Washington, D.C. law firm Covington & Burling. He had one condition for the job: to have his own personal computer. He was the first person in the firm with one; it ran Microsoft Word version 1.0. Smith worked for three years in Washington D.C., and four in London, running Covington's software practice there.By 1993 he had become a partner.Nusca, Andrew (September 14, 2015). "Meet Microsoft's new president: Brad Smith". Fortune. Retrieved December 4, 2017.