Kim Akers is general manager for marketing in the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft Corp. She started her career at Microsoft in 1995 on the Office product marketing team. Over the past 12 years, Akers has held various roles in the Information Worker and Server and Tools divisions. She has been responsible for a variety of marketing activities including marketing communications, product planning, product marketing, product launches, and business management for products ranging from the Microsoft® Office suite to the Windows® operating system. More recently, Akers has been the marketing leader for the Server Platform and the Exchange Server teams. In her current role since June 2006, Akers leads Microsoft’s business strategy to use Software plus Services to deliver messaging, voice and conferencing solutions.

Akers is a native of Seattle and graduated from Stanford University with a degree in quantitative economics. She also holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.