It was just last February that Microsoft Surface chief Panos Panay was promoted to lead the company’s entire Windows software and device teams, and now he’s moving up in the world again — he’s becoming an Executive Vice President who’ll be part of the Senior Leadership Team that advises Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella himself, reports Bloomberg.
We’ve interviewed him quite a few times over the years, and not just because he’s one of the company’s faces — as Microsoft’s Chief Product Officer, he’s had a direct hand in creating and introducing many of Microsoft’s Surface devices including the recent Surface Duo. Also, yes, he’s the one who’s perpetually pumped.
From a corporate standpoint, this means Windows will have a seat at the senior leadership table for the first time since former Windows chief Terry Myerson departed in 2018, which makes sense: then, Nadella believed in a shift away from Windows to the cloud, but he recently changed his mind.
It’s not clear what the move means for Rajesh Jha, who served as Microsoft’s EVP of Experiences and Devices last we checked, or others on Microsoft’s leadership page, for that matter. That page appears to have been recently replaced with a smaller list of “Executive Officers” rather than the previous list of “Senior Leaders,” but a number of Microsoft’s other EVPs like Xbox boss Phil Spencer and Cloud + AI boss Scott Guthrie haven’t returned to the list yet, and there’s no evidence their roles have changed at all.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella himself recently became more powerful than ever: in June, he was unanimously elected to become chairman of the board in addition to CEO, the first person to have both roles at Microsoft since Bill Gates himself.
Panay also joined Sonos’ board of directors late last year.
