Microsoft Names Former GE Executive to New Operations Role

(Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. has named Carolina Dybeck Happe chief operations officer, a role that has been vacant at the company since 2016.

Dybeck Happe will report to Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and join the senior leadership team, Nadella wrote in a memo posted Thursday on Microsoft’s website.

Dybeck Happe spent just over three years as CFO at General Electric Co., announcing her departure from that role in 2023. She joined GE, now known as GE Aerospace, as CFO in early 2020 from shipping giant Maersk and helped execute the company’s historic breakup plan while overseeing a transformation of GE’s balance sheet.

Throughout its history, Microsoft has sometimes gone without a COO for years, and the role has been slightly different under various executives. The previous COO, Kevin Turner, left in 2016 and focused much of his time on improving the salesforce and wooing corporate customers. Dybeck Happe’s role will revolve around improving companywide operational excellence in such areas as security and quality, Nadella said.

Microsoft is overhauling its product lineup around artificial intelligence features, trying to manage their quality and attract customers to deploy them. At the same time, it wants to instill a new focus on the security of its products after multiple damaging cyberattacks affected clients, including the US government.

Nadella credited Dybeck Happe for her role in GE’s turnaround. “She is recognized for her ability to drive transformational change at scale while delivering improved customer experiences,” he wrote in the memo.