John Wendell Thompson (born April 24, 1949)[1] is the CEO of privately held Virtual Instruments and the chairman of Microsoft. He is a former vice-president at IBM and the former chief executive officer (CEO) of Symantec. Thompson later became an independent director on the board of Microsoft, and on February 4, 2014, he was named the chairman of the board.[2] He led the search for Microsoft's next CEO; as a result, Satya Nadella was selected.[3]