Mark Penn is Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, responsible for working on core strategic issues across Microsoft’s products, value propositions, and investments and leading the company’s competitive research and analysis. Penn reports to CEO Satya Nadella and serves on Microsoft’s Senior Leadership Team. He oversees an interdisciplinary strategy team and works with product and other teams across the company.

Previously, Penn was worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller and CEO of Penn Schoen Berland, serving as senior adviser to global corporate and political leaders including Bill Gates, Bill Ford, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Bill Clinton.

For six years, Penn served as White House Pollster to President Clinton and was a key strategy adviser in his 1996 re-election, identifying "soccer moms" as the key swing vote needed for victory. Penn also served as chief strategist to Hillary Clinton in her Senate campaigns and 2008 Presidential campaign, devising her "upstate strategy" in New York and creating the "3 AM" ad in the 2008 primaries. Throughout his career, Penn has helped elect more than 25 leaders in the United States, Asia, Latin America and Europe.

Penn is the author of the 2007 bestselling book “Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes,” and of the recurring Wall Street Journal “Microtrends” column. In a cover story, Time Magazine called him “Master of the Message.”

Penn earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College and attended Columbia Law School. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Holocaust Museum’s Committee on Conscience, and he serves on the board of Meridian International Center. Penn is also a visiting lecturer at Harvard College.