Steve Ballmer is the chairman of the L.A. Clippers, founder of USAFacts, and co-founder of the Ballmer Group. He is the former CEO of Microsoft.
Entering his sixth year as chairman, the Clippers hold a 250-160 (.610) record during his tenure. Ballmer passionately believes in leading the Clippers forward with a focus on on-court success, a fan-first philosophy, and consistent improvements in all aspects of team business, positively impacting the communities we touch.
Ballmer became Microsoft’s CEO in 2000, having served for 20 years in roles as president, senior vice president of sales and support, senior vice president of systems software, and vice president of marketing. He was the company’s first business manager. During his tenure at Microsoft, the company pioneered personal computing and democratized enterprise computing, growing from a small start-up to a company that today employs more than 110,000 people. When Ballmer retired from Microsoft in 2014, it had grown to almost $80 billion in revenue and was the third most profitable company in the United States. He remains a significant shareholder.
Along with his wife Connie, Ballmer serves as Co-founder of Ballmer Group, which supports efforts to improve economic mobility for children and families across the United States who are disproportionately likely to remain in poverty. They focus this philanthropic work deeply in Los Angeles, Washington state, and southeast Michigan where Steve grew up.
Ballmer is the Founder of the non-partisan and non-profit USAFacts.org civic initiative, the most comprehensive, understandable, single-view online source of American government data. USAFacts provides a well-visualized look at data and trends in US spending, revenue, demographics, and policy outcomes – aimed at helping Americans ground our debates in facts. He has taught at Stanford University on this topic as well as on business leadership.
Ballmer was born in March 1956, and grew up near Detroit, where his father worked as a manager at Ford Motor Company. Ballmer earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics from Harvard University. He worked for two years at Procter & Gamble Company as an assistant product manager and attended Stanford University Graduate School of Business before joining Microsoft. He and Connie live in Bellevue, Washington.