Microsoft hires former GE CFO Carolina Dybeck Happe as COO

Microsoft told employees Thursday that it has hired Carolina Dybeck Happe as executive vice president and chief operations officer. She will report to CEO Satya Nadella. Dybeck Happe comes from GE, where she was senior vice president and chief financial officer from 2020 to September 2023.

The appointment reflects Microsoft's commitment to maintaining coordination as a large part of the company focuses on artificial intelligence.

She will join Microsoft's senior leadership team, supporting Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood, Cloud and AI Engineering Director Scott Guthrie, and other executives.

“Carolina will work with the SLT to help us drive continuous business process improvement across our organizations and accelerate our enterprise-wide AI transformation to increase value for customers and partners,” Nadella wrote in a memo to employees.

Nadella said Dybeck Happe will take over Guthrie's commerce and ecosystem organization, the Microsoft Digital IT team under Office software head Rajesh Jha, and the Microsoft Business Operations unit in the finance department.

Dybeck Happe's appointment comes several months after GE's aerospace and energy businesses, known as GE Aerospace and GE Vernova respectively, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. GE announced plans to split into three companies in 2021.

GE CEO Larry Culp called Dybeck Happe “an influential executive” when GE announced in 2019 that it had selected Dybeck Happe to succeed Jamie Miller as chief financial officer.

Previously, she worked as Chief Financial Officer at Maersk. Before that, she spent almost 17 years at Swedish lock manufacturer Assa Abloy, where she became Chief Financial Officer and Deputy CEO.

Microsoft hasn't had a chief operating officer since 2016, when former Walmart executive Kevin Turner left the company.

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