Laura A. Clayton McDonnell is Vice President, New York Region at Microsoft. In this capacity, she provides executive leadership and management of the Microsoft New York Region, with a team of over 230 industry sales, technical and business professionals. She manages executive relationships at the world’s largest companies for Microsoft and represents the company in community initiatives with private and public organizations. Laura has extensive sales management and legal experience in the information technology industry.

Prior to Microsoft, she was Senior Vice President, North America Sales at Aspect Software. Prior to that role, she was Vice President of Strategic Services at IBM and closed the first $200M+, 5 year long term services transformational deal with a leading insurer/healthcare provider in Spanish South America. She also was Vice President, Public Sector, West IMT, North America Group leading a $2.2B sales organization which supported the State and Local Government, Education, Healthcare and Life Sciences industries. In that capacity, she generated 11 out of 13 quarters of positive growth, holding or taking market share in all quarters except one. She also led the Smarter Cities/Smarter Planet and the North America Healthcare Growth Initiatives.

Laura received her Bachelor of Science degree “with distinction” in International Business Administration at San Jose State University, her Masters in Business Administration degree from the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley in Finance and International Business Administration, and her Juris Doctorate from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California at Berkeley.