Geoff Nyheim is the Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Partners for Microsoft Corporation’s Business Online Services. In this capacity since mid 2009, Nyheim and a diverse team of sales, technical, strategy, marketing, services and channel professionals are responsible for delivering sustained business value to Microsoft’s customers and channel partners globally. Aligned with the company’s Business Online Services product group, Nyheim is at the center of Microsoft’s transformation from a primarily on-premise software model to a software-plus-services approach focused on providing customers of all sizes the flexibility and choice to mix-and-match either or both self-provisioned and cloud based services integrating with rich client applications, browsers and smart phones. Nyheim’s balanced business scorecard includes competitive wins and resulting market share gains, customer satisfaction, revenue growth, partner strategy and ecosystem health, marketing and sales campaign effectiveness, employee morale and leadership development success.
Immediately prior to his current role, Nyheim spent six years as the Regional Vice-President for the Microsoft United States subsidiary’s multi-billion dollar Central Region Enterprise business with line responsibility for the company’s largest enterprise customers and partners plus citizenship initiatives and a large percentage of employees across eighteen states. Nyheim’s tenure in Chicago began in 2000 as Midwest District General Manager focused on Microsoft’s customers and partners in the states of Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. Throughout this period as a field leader, Nyheim’s teams delivered consistent and sustained high performance in market share gains, profitability, customer and partner satisfaction, employee health, and development of new leaders exported throughout the company.
Previously, Nyheim spent five years at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington. As General Manager of Global Partners Nyheim led an organization directly responsible for worldwide alliances with global original-equipment-manufacture technology providers, independent-software-vendors, business integration consultancies and outsourcers. Nyheim personally led Microsoft’s billion-dollar alliance with Accenture, including start-up of the joint venture Avanade. As Director of Enterprise Offerings Nyheim was responsible for worldwide strategy and initiatives in the Systems Integrator, Data Center, Application Integration and Government markets. Before this post, Geoff was the Enterprise Business Process Manager where he focused on sales strategy, customer intelligence, field communications and executive business reviews. Nyheim joined Microsoft in 1991 and during the next several years he held a number of field sales management positions in the Silicon Valley and Kansas City markets.
Before joining Microsoft, Nyheim spent eight years in San Francisco Bay Area based sales positions at Hewlett-Packard and Unisys where he received numerous awards for business performance.
Nyheim graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Economy. He and his wife Nancy live in Hinsdale, Illinois and have three daughters. Their charitable giving and time investments support the arts, education and healthcare. Mr. Nyheim was a member of the Chicago IT Resource Center Board of Governors from 2001-2004. He is a current member of the Executives Club of Chicago and serves on the Museum of Science and Industry’s Smart Visit Advisory Committee. In 2007, he was elected to the Steppenwolf Theatre Board of Trustees in Chicago http://www.steppenwolf.org/ with responsibility for leading the Tony award winning theater’s Corporate Partners Program.