The Raikes School hosted Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on April 18 in conjunction with Nebraska’s N150 celebration. Satya had a full day interacting with Nebraska businesses, Raikes School students, and the Nebraska community.
Mr. Nadella’s time at the Raikes School kicked off with presentations from three Design Studio Teams: Water For Food B, Nebraska Department of Transportation (NDOT), and Microsoft. The Water for Food B team developed a prototype data logging and management device for irrigation water and energy meters, enabling storing of data, offloading via USB/Bluetooth, and data analysis or visualizations. The NDOT team leveraged the ability of the Nebraska Transportation Information Portal system to automate generation of a vehicle collision intersection or corridor crash diagram. The Microsoft team created an Azure based solution that takes job descriptions and resumes as input and provides a ranking to help identify the best talent for open positions. The opportunity to present to Mr. Nadella and respond to his questions was a highlight of the day for the leaders of these three teams.
The day continued with an open discussion between Jeff Raikes and Mr. Nadella at the Lied Center for Performing Arts. Approximately 800 people attended, including many Raikes School alumni. Attendees heard Mr. Raikes and Mr. Nadella discuss concepts from Hit Refresh, Mr. Nadella’s recent book, as well as share stories and lessons learned from their experiences at Microsoft and in leadership.
The Raikes School students, faculty, staff, and Design Studio Associates then moved to the Lied Commons for a private, 45-minute question and answer session with Mr. Nadella. The Q&A began with Mr. Nadella presenting signed copies of his book to the inaugural winners of the Raikes School core value awards selected by the Raikes School Student Advisory Board – Intellectual Curiosity: Dylan Gray (cohort 2015), Humility: Karl Shaffer (cohort 2016), Gratitude: Emily Wagner (cohort 2015), Excellence: Sam Futterman (cohort 2016), Accountability: Luke Bogus (cohort 2017), and Resilience: Madeleine May (cohort 2018).
We greatly appreciate Mr. Nadella sharing his time and wisdom with the Raikes School. We also extend our thanks to Jeff and Tricia Raikes, Chancellor Green and their teams for their helping make these events possible.
