Yusuf Mehdi

Chief Marketing Officer, Interactive Entertainment Business

Updated: Nov. 9, 2011

As the chief marketing officer for Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB), Yusuf Mehdi is responsible for the Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, Xbox 360 games and Kinect brands. He works with the IEB leadership team to create hit products and services. Mehdi specifically leads product management, product marketing, market and business intelligence, PR/AR, advertising, brand and relationship marketing for the entire Xbox 360 business. Mehdi also oversees the IEB business leaders in EMEA and Japan.

Previously Mehdi spent 10 years in Microsoft's Online Services Division where he held a variety of roles including overall P&L ownership for the division, engineering for search, portal and advertising platforms, product marketing, advertising sales, media programming, and strategic partnerships. During this period, Mehdi led an 1,800-person engineering team to develop and launch Microsoft's entry into search and online advertising. More recently, he led the marketing rollout of Bing, which has doubled market share in its first two years, reaching over 100 million people. Mehdi played a lead role in striking the strategic search alliance with Yahoo! that now collectively accounts for approximately 30 percent of all U.S. searches.

Prior to his role in the Online Services Division, Mehdi was responsible for the product management and marketing of Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 1.0 through 5.0. Under his direction, Internet Explorer went from its initial rollout to become the world's most popular software for browsing the Web.

Mehdi began his career at Microsoft in 1992, playing key roles in the launch and marketing of Microsoft Windows, including the notable releases of Windows 3.1 and Windows 95.

Before joining Microsoft, Mehdi was a product manager at Reuters Group PLC, where he found his love for technology, the Internet, and media by helping roll out the first PC-based Reuters Terminal, which became the standard computing platform for the company.

A native of Washington state, Mehdi earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Princeton University and an MBA from the University of Washington. He and his wife and three children live in Washington.