Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced the appointment of a new executive, Preston McAfee who will serve as chief economist as the company aims to become a leader in creating a data-driven culture as it explores creative, diverse strategies to create greater value for customers.
McAfee will directly report to Harry Shum, executive vice president of Technology and Research at Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT).
In his new role, he will lead a team of economist at Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) who will work closely with CFO Amy Hood, the business and engineering groups across the company in developing new business models, metrics, designing marketplaces for advertising and apps, assisting with government relations and policy, and developing an economic strategy for the company.
McAfee formerly served as director of strategic technologies at Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL). Prior to that, he worked as chief economist and research fellow at Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) for five years from 2007 to 2012.
According to Shum, McAfee captured the attention of the software giant during his tenure at Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ:YHOO) where he built a team that became well-known for doing interesting research while ensure the impact to current products. Yahoo! and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) are partners in providing search service.
McAffee is currently serving as advisor to Rand Education; council member at Game Theory Society; founding co-editor of ACM Transactions on Economics and Computation; and member of the Board of Governors at Pardee Rand Graduate School. He received various accolades, granted several patents and published two economic textbooks.
“Preston is a world-class researcher in micro-economics and marketplace design who brings to Microsoft a unique blend of research depth combined with real-world applicability. His past work has brought together economics, computer science, and engineering to create innovative solutions for problems such as the design of efficient auctions for telecommunications spectrum and display advertising…,” wrote Shum in a blog post.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) also appointed Jeff Teper, a former vice president of Office software as head of corporate strategy. He will also report the company’s CFO. Teper will be responsible in the areas of acquisitions and development.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has been restructuring the executive team of the software giant in recent months. He took over the leadership of the company last February.
Last March, Mark Penn joined the company as chief strategy officer; Phil Spencer took over as head of Xbox and Scott Guthrie assume the previous position held by Nadella as head of Cloud. Former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop was named executive vice president of the Devices business of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT).
