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Microsoft has appointed company veteran Amy Coleman as its new executive vice president and chief people officer, succeeding Kathleen Hogan after her decade-long tenure in the role.
Hogan will transition to a newly created Office of Strategy and Transformation, which expands the CEO’s office. In her new role, she will remain an executive vice president and continue reporting directly to CEO Satya Nadella.
Coleman steps into a significant position, with Microsoft employing 228,000 people globally as of June 2024. She has been with the company for over 25 years across two separate stints, having first joined as a compensation manager in 1996. Most recently, she served as corporate vice president for human resources and corporate functions, where she led a 200-person HR team and played a key role in Microsoft’s hybrid work model and Covid-19 response strategy.
Extensive HR experience
Coleman’s background includes HR leadership roles supporting Microsoft’s engineering, sales, marketing, and business development teams. Over the past six years, she has advised both Hogan and Nadella, overseeing initiatives that influenced the company’s workplace culture, employee engagement model, and crisis response strategy.
“Amy has been a trusted advisor to both Kathleen and me, leading key cross-company workstreams to evolve our culture and improve employee engagement,” Nadella wrote in a company-wide memo. “She played a vital role in establishing our employee relations team and managing our enterprise crisis response for employees.”
Hogan's new role
Hogan, who joined Microsoft in 2003 after previous roles at Oracle and McKinsey, will continue to hold a place on the senior leadership team. During her tenure as chief people officer, she championed cultural changes, including shifting Microsoft’s performance review system and introducing new approaches to company-wide meetings and employee engagement forums.
She also encouraged managers to assess inclusivity among employees and improved internal processes for handling sexual harassment cases.
In a 2019 interview with Business Insider, Hogan reflected on her efforts to embed a “growth mindset” culture at Microsoft, influenced by psychologist Carol Dweck's principles.
“We made significant symbolic changes to demonstrate our commitment to transforming company culture,” Hogan said at the time.
With Coleman now in place as the new Microsoft HR head, her extensive experience within the organization will guide efforts to build on Hogan’s cultural initiatives while navigating workforce challenges at one of the world’s largest technology companies.
