October 9, 2000

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Women In Technology
Linda Stone, Microsoft

By Aaron Ricadela

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icrosoft's publicists like to describe Linda Stone's job as a "listening role" that's still being defined. The question is, by whom? Judging by the official communiqués from Microsoft--and there are few regarding Stone, the company's VP of corporate and industry initiatives and the latest addition to Microsoft's executive suite--her job description looks something like this: A free-spirited and independent-thinking researcher with an eclectic background in interdisciplinary education and multimedia communications. The software developer in May appointed Stone to a newly created position in which she'll listen closely to the needs of employees, customers, and business partners, and advise Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on how to make the company more responsive to each party.

n case there's any doubt that Microsoft's newest public face is a break from the hard-charging Redmond mold, a press release that accompanies Stone's biography on Microsoft's Web site features a quote in large red type in which the VP, who previously worked as a teacher and children's librarian, says, "You've got to follow your interests and your passions and do the things that matter to you." Could this be the softer side of Microsoft shining through?

Stone is a lot more pragmatic than that. "Obviously, if I were to listen to everybody, I'd live about another three years," she says. Stone, 45, joined Microsoft's research department seven years ago, after a seven-year stint at Apple Computer during which she served as CEO John Sculley's personal assistant. At Microsoft, she co-founded the research division's Virtual Worlds Group, which studies the way people communicate online. Opening communications is key to her new position as well.

During five months on the job, Stone says she's been deluged with E-mail from Microsoft employees suggesting ways to improve the company's culture and strategy. In order to stay nimble, says Stone, executives including Ballmer and chairman Bill Gates are committed to soaking up knowledge. "This is a learning company," she says. While reticent to discuss details of her job, Stone describes herself as a "connector" between Microsoft and the rest of the industry.

Microsoft could use some sprucing up in the outreach department. The company's years-long antitrust battle against the U.S. government hasn't done much to improve its reputation as a bully. What's more, Microsoft faces an Internet-centric competitive landscape in which technology innovations occur much more rapidly than can be controlled from within its campus walls. To react, say industry insiders, Microsoft needs an evangelist, a coalition-builder, someone with a tireless appetite for putting her face--and her thoughts--in front of technology's influencers at conferences and other gatherings. In other words, someone who's a lot like Linda Stone.

"Microsoft's not an easy company to work with," says Sculley, Apple's CEO from 1983 to 1995 and now a partner at Sculley Brothers LLC, a New York venture-capital firm. He talks regularly to his former assistant, working to get startups that he funds a chance to do business with the software giant. "Microsoft is so big and self-sufficient, I don't think it's as sensitive as others are to working with small companies. Linda's job is to try to get Microsoft to appreciate how much an impact it has on smaller companies when [employees] don't follow through."

Stone's reputation is as a master organizer who dissects problems intellectually, then tackles them by building a level of trust among participants. "Gates and Ballmer have kind of lived in a world where they're always out doing the company's business," says Stuart J. Johnston, a journalist who's covered Microsoft since the 1980s and an InformationWeek columnist. "Linda was out there getting plugged in."

According to Sculley, Stone singlehandedly opened the publishing market for Apple, selling the company's story to companies such as Random House and Simon & Schuster, as well as to developers, resellers, and other industry participants. Nathan Myhrvold, who left Microsoft this spring after a 14-year tenure--he founded the company's research division in 1991 and served as chief technology officer--says he spent more than a year recruiting Stone to Microsoft after noticing that she was a "one-woman army" at Apple, motivating multimedia developers to support the Macintosh platform.

"She has a different point of view than other people at Microsoft," says Myhrvold. "Even people she doesn't know become friends with her within a few minutes, confiding their innermost secrets to her. She's great at being warm and fuzzy." For example, Stone, whose background is far from technical--she graduated from Evergreen State College in Washington state, went into teaching, and later earned an interdisciplinary graduate degree in education, cognitive psychology, and librarianship at the University of Washington--has been able to pry prized technologists away from their jobs to come work for Microsoft. "She brings a passion to what she does," Myhrvold says.

FactFile

Title: VP of corporate and industry initiatives at Microsoft Years at Microsoft: Seven Previous positions at Microsoft: Co-founded and was director of the Virtual Worlds Group in Microsoft Research Previous positions at other companies: Worked from 1986 to 1993 as a systems analyst, market development manager, and software evangelist at Apple Computer; also worked on special projects for CEO John Sculley Education: Evergreen State College, graduate degree from the University of Washington. Personal status:Single, no children Hobbies:Reading No. of high-level female execs at Microsoft: Five

Stone's entry into high-tech came during three years of rehabilitation from a car accident in 1981. Unable to dance or ski, she says she used the time to learn about computers, becoming involved in the computers-in-education movement. While writing grants and teaching, she met some employees at Apple, which dominated the education market. "I loved Apple," she says. "Coming to Microsoft surprised me as much as it surprised everyone I know."

At Microsoft's research department, Stone's work in the Virtual Worlds group yielded insights into building "social interfaces" for computers, including a 3-D model of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, where patients can meet via computer in an online environment that mirrors the center's layout. "She's someone who has done an incredible job of humanizing technology," says professor Red Burns, chair of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where Stone has taught as a guest lecturer during the past several years.

Working in technology taxes "a different part of yourself" than education, says Stone. "Here it's, 'Can you learn this volume of stuff about wireless?' In education, the big challenge was, 'Can I take this group of kids and teach them?' It's a different kind of excitement to see a child learn borrowing or subtraction."

Her life hardly lacks for excitement now. Seated two doors down from Microsoft's demanding CEO, she's charged with nothing less than improving Microsoft's relations with other companies. "Linda has been a high-profile person at Microsoft from the beginning," says Myhrvold. "She couldn't help but have some kind of impact on Microsoft's image. Steve decided it would be a great idea to formalize a role like that." She's also one of only five high-level women executives at the company, out of more than 40 top employees.

Is life tougher for women in the technology industry? While Stone says success is more a matter of talent than gender, she allows that women are still learning to ask for what they want. "The men who've worked for me have always been skilled at asking for what they want and knowing what they have to offer."

Another lesson: Never take anything that happens on the job personally. "It took time for me to figure that out," Stone says. "You might invent a story in your head about why someone is trying to scuttle your project. But once you get lost in a story about taking it personally, you've lost the heart of what it is you're trying to do."

Continue on to profile of Deborah Willingham, Microsoft
Return to profile of Linda Sanford, IBM

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