Henry Brian Valentine (born November 28, 1959) is an American software executive and casual poker player. He has held positions at large companies including

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

and

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon, is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevu ...

Early life

Born in

Centralia, Washington Centralia () is a city in Lewis County, Washington, Lewis County, Washington (state), Washington, United States. It is located along Interstate 5 in Washington, Interstate 5 near the midpoint between Seattle and Portland, Oregon. The city had a ...

, he graduated from high school in 1977 and enrolled in Centralia Community College (CCC). Upon graduating from CCC in 1979 with an

associate degree An associate degree or associate's degree is an undergraduate degree awarded after a course of post-secondary study lasting two to three years. It is a level of academic qualification above a high school diploma and below a bachelor's degree ...

, Valentine then enrolled in the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

's engineering department. Valentine spent one year at UW before taking a leave of absence in 1980. In the fall of 1981, Valentine enrolled in the Computer Science and Math school at Eastern Washington University (EWU) in Cheney, Washington. In his senior year at EWU, Valentine was selected to develop the software for an automated energy management and control system. He graduated from EWU with a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree in Computer Science in May 1983 and took a job as a software engineer at

, working on software for in-circuit emulators, and major systems programming for

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

and VMS applications.

Microsoft

In August 1987, Valentine resigned from Intel and took a position at Microsoft after his former Intel colleague Paul Maritz invited him to join. He spent the next 19 years launching some of the most widely used software products of their time. He led the team that launched

Microsoft Exchange Server Microsoft Exchange Server is a mail server and calendaring server developed by Microsoft. It runs exclusively on Windows Server operating systems. The first version was called Exchange Server 4.0, to position it as the successor to the relat ...

4.0, 5.0 and 5.5. As a result of his success with Exchange, he was personally asked by

Steve Ballmer Steven Anthony Ballmer (; March 24, 1956) is an American businessman and investor who served as chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He i ...

in 1998 to rescue the then-failing Windows 2000 project. In one year, Valentine was able to successfully deliver

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft, targeting the server and business markets. It is the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RT ...

in December 1999. He then went on to lead the teams responsible for

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

, XP SP2,

Windows Server 2003 Windows Server 2003, codenamed "Whistler Server", is the sixth major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft and the first server version to be released under the Windows Server brand name. It is part of the Windows NT ...

and

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

Amazon

In 2006, Valentine moved to join

where he built and led the eCommerce Platform team, before leaving in early 2014.

Post-Amazon

Valentine joined Ivy Softworks, an Innovation Studio in Seattle, in September 2014 where he worked until 2015.

Other ventures

Valentine has two final tables at the World Series of Poker Circuit Tour and nine cashes at the World Series of Poker Tour.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Valentine, Brian Amazon (company) people Microsoft employees Living people Microsoft Windows people 1959 births People from Centralia, Washington Amateur poker players