John W. Thompson

John Wendell Thompson is an American technology executive who served as the Chair of Microsoft from 2014 until June 2021 and Chair of Illumina since 2021. He is a former chief executive of Virtual Instruments, a Vice-President at IBM and the former chief executive of Symantec. Thompson later became an independent Director on the Board of Microsoft, and on February 4, 2014, he was named the Chairman of the Board. He led the search for Microsoft's next CEO; as a result, Satya Nadella was selected.