Stephen Elop

Stephen Elop (born 31 December 1963) is a Canadian businessman who most recently worked at Australian telecom company Telstra from April 2016. In the past he had worked for Nokia as its first non-Finnish CEO and later as Executive Vice President, Devices & Services, as well as the head of the Microsoft Business Division, as the COO of Juniper Networks, as the president of worldwide field operations at Adobe Systems, in several senior positions in Macromedia and as the CIO at Boston Chicken. He is best known for his ill-fated tenure as Nokia CEO from 2010 to 2014, which included controversies such as the "burning platform" memo and the company's partnership with Microsoft, resulting in the move to Windows Phone software exclusivity. He was criticised for some of his decisions, which resulted in the company suffering massive losses both financially and in market share. As then head of the Microsoft Devices Group, Elop was in charge of Microsoft's varied product offerings including Lumia phones, Surface Pro 3, and Xbox One. Since January 2016 he has had a role as Distinguished Engineering Executive in Residence within McMaster University's Faculty of Engineering, where he originally studied in the 1980s. Early life and education Elop was born in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, as the second of three children in a family. His mother was a chemist and his father was an engineer at Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Both of them still live in Ancaster. His grandfather was a wireless operator who used morse code from ships in both the First World War and Second World War. Elop was influenced by and learned much about technology from his grandfather. From 1981, Elop studied computer engineering and management at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. After his first year at the University, Elop wrote the user operating manual, called the Orange Book, for the campus's new computer system, VAX-11/780. During that time he helped lay 22 kilometres of Ethernet cables around campus to build one of the first computer networks in Canada. He graduated second in his class with a bachelor's degree in 1986. In 2007, McMaster's Faculty of Engineering made Elop the second L.W. Shemilt Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award winner and in 2009, he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree by McMaster.