Updated: November 18, 2008

Roz Ho is corporate vice president for Premium Mobile Experiences at Microsoft, where she leads a team working on consumer-focused projects in mobile communications. She is also responsible for the integration of Danger Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft in April, 2008.

Previously, Ho was the General Manager of the Entertainment and Devices Division Labs at Microsoft where she led an effort for this division to pursue product innovation focusing on consumer experiences in the consumer and entertainment space. Ho spent four years (Jan. 2003 to March 2007) as General Manager of the Macintosh Business Unit, where her team was responsible for the development and marketing of Mac Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage), Virtual PC for the Mac, Internet Explorer for the Mac, Messenger for the Mac, MSN client for the Mac and Remote Desktop Client for the Mac. Prior to working at the Macintosh Business Unit, Ho served in program management and product planning roles in the Microsoft PowerPoint and OfficeArt teams. She defined the product vision, designed and wrote feature specifications and managed overall project dependencies. While Ho led the team, Microsoft PowerPoint received dozens of patents and numerous industry awards.

Before joining Microsoft in 1991, Ho was a software engineer for Hewlett-Packard for five years and worked on the development of an object-oriented graphical user interface programming environment. She also spent two years working as a software engineer developing a number of financial systems at Bank of America, including the first large-scale ATM system in the world.

Ho knew that she wanted to work in software development from the moment that she experienced her first taste of Fortran programming in high school. She serves on the board of directors of Aim High, a non-profit focused on providing underserved urban youth with challenging, innovative and highly supportive educational programs. She holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. In her spare time, she likes traveling to remote locations to visit archeological sites, is a member of the Traveler's Century Club and has actually been to Timbuktu. Closer to home, Roz loves to ski steep slopes and deep powder.

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