Person attributes
Brad Smith is the chief legal counsel of Microsoft and has served as its president since 2002. He is Microsoft's second president, following Richard Belluzzo, who retained the position from 2001 to 2002 alongside becoming Microsoft's chief operating officer. Smith has worked in Microsoft since 1993, leading the European branch's corporate affairs and legal team. Since becoming Microsoft's general counsel, Brad Smith has been involved in numerous lawsuit settlements worldwide involving Microsoft's antitrust practices, diverging from Microsoft's more aggressive approach for legal entanglements. In 2019, he released a book with Carol Ann-Browne, entitled Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age.
Smith attended Princeton University as an undergraduate before continuing his study at Columbia Law School. He also spent a year studying at The Graduate Institute (IHEID). Before joining Microsoft, he joined the law firm Covington and Burling until he became a partner. Smith is married to Kathy Surace-Smith, whom he met as a student in Princeton, and has two children; a daughter and a son.
