Chasing Amy

Microsoft CFO Amy Hood has long been visionary CEO Satya Nadella’s unperturbable partner.

Known for her level-headed approach, Hood has driven Microsoft’s growth as its CFO since 2013.

Most recently, she has helped lead the world’s third largest company by market capitalization (US$3.39tr) to unprecedented heights through its focus on cloud computing. 

Responsible for leading the firm’s worldwide finance operation, she has worked on over numerous  deals throughout the years and currently steers the company’s spending on artificial intelligence. 

In doing so, Hood has kept Microsoft’s position as a leading player in digital and the broader tech markets, alongside competitors Apple and Google.

It wasn’t always that way. 

According to Forbes, Microsoft saw its stock surge almost 300% during the first five years of Hood’s tenure as CFO.

Hood has proved that her assessment counts. She has shown a grounded approach and a willingness to challenge projects, when her colleagues, and even Nadella himself, get carried away.

But when she supports a project, Hood is not afraid to put a considerable amount of money behind it. For example, she was a cheerleader for Microsoft’s US$7.5bn acquisition of software platform GitHub in 2018.

It’s this conviction that helps make her a successful strategist in her own right, as well as an asset to Nadella.

Feeling unqualified

Born 9 August 1971, Hood was brought up in Kentucky and Nashville in a medical family. Her father was a doctor and her mother taught nursing.

Her aptitude with numbers was clear early on. 

A member of her school maths team, she studied economics at Duke university, rather than taking an accounting course - the typical choice for future CFOs. She worked at Goldman Sachs for eight years, during which time she also completed her MBA at Harvard. Hood quit Goldman Sachs with no other job lined up. 

She once said: “Every job I took, I was deeply uncomfortable in terms of feeling unqualified. Every step, every risk I took, built confidence”.

However, in 2002 she joined Microsoft, and quickly rose up the ranks, working in the investor relations team, then as Chief of Staff in its Server and Tools business. Along the way, she met Nadella, whose career was also rapidly progressing within the company.

As a member of Microsoft’s business division, which looked after the firm’s productivity applications and services, including Microsoft Office 365, Exchange, SharePoint, Dynamics CRM and Dynamics ERP, Hood assisted in leading the transition to the firm’s Office 365 service. 

She also played a pivotal role in the successful acquisitions of communication platforms, Skype and Yammer - now Viva Engage.

She was appointed as Peter Klein’s replacement as CFO in 2013, towards the end of Steve Ballmer’s tenure as CEO, and has continued in the role ever since. 

Since 2017, she has also lent her expertise to the board of directors at Fortune 500 tech company 3M.

Hood’s pay package for fiscal year 2024 rose to US$25.8 million, an increase of 30% from a year earlier, according to a regulatory filing.

Hood currently lives with her two children and husband in Seattle, Washington. She and her partner, along with Nadella and his wife Anupama, are all minority owners of soccer team Seattle Sounders FC.

‘Do not build a gold toilet’

According to CNBC, Hood once advised colleagues not to “build a gold toilet” in a meeting a few years ago, referring to the tendency of wealthy tech companies to develop products for the sake of it, rather than meet a customer’s needs.

Hood’s strategy appears to be to stay ahead of the curve and adapt to changing market conditions, but, more crucially, to refuse to blindly follow the competition. 

Seeing the trend away from one-off software sales to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), she shifted the company’s focus towards subscriptions, and has redirected funds from developing more of Microsoft’s hardware into its growing cloud computing division, believing that this was where it is better spent.

Moves such as the US$26bn acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016, appeared bold and needed significant investment, but have paid off in the long term.

In terms of work culture, Hood is reported as telling new recruits around six years ago that her role is not just balancing the books and planning expenditure.

“I may have thought about it that way when I took the job almost five years ago. But now it’s about creating an environment in which you all remember that you still want to pick us every day. That’s my job as a CFO,” she said.

She has reportedly helped win employees, investors and customers back to Microsoft.

Cloud computing drive

Hood has played a pivotal role in driving Microsoft’s digital advancements, including its shift to cloud computing and its current burgeoning developments involving incorporating AI throughout its product range. This includes working on the firm’s partnership with OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT.

The company’s AI strategy was met with investor approval in January, catapulting its shares above the US$3tr market capitalisation milestone.

In addition to playing a major part in Microsoft’s successful acquisitions of, for example, GitHub and Mojang AB (maker of Minecraft), the CFO’s expertise has extended to the US$$75.4bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard (creator of smartphone game Candy Crush Saga) - the largest technology acquisition in history, according to Barron’s.

Microsoft Corp recently announced its June 2024 Q4 and FY24 end-of-year results.  

Taking into account results across all sectors, the company’ total revenue increased by 16% to a total of US$245.1bn with a net income of $88.1bn.  

According to Hood, the firm had a “solid quarter, highlighted by record bookings and Microsoft quarterly cloud revenue of US$36.8 billion, up 21% year-over-year”.  

The comment shows how Hood’s enthusiasm for the cloud has paid off. 

In 2020, Microsoft became the second company to ever reach a market capitalisation of US$1tr. The milestone was thought to largely be the result of the company performing considerably well in cloud-based services.

Hood’s achievements have earned her a place on the Forbes World’s 100 Most Powerful Women list on multiple occasions. She ranked 63rd on the list in 2013 and 28th in 2021.

Among other forms of acknowledgement, Hood was recognised as one of Fortune's Most Powerful Women in 2016.