Mark East

Mark East is responsible for all sales, marketing, partner development and Microsoft academic programmes in Europe, Africa and the Middle East (EMEA). This encompasses Microsoft partners that service, sell and support the education market and all educational institutions, from the smallest primary school to the largest university in the EMEA region.

East joined Microsoft UK in 1988 in a role to promote the use of Microsoft® technology to the UK education community. In 1990, he was awarded the Microsoft President’s Award by Bill Gates for his contribution to the success of Microsoft technology deployments in the UK education sector.

Since joining Microsoft, east has managed sales and marketing teams in the Apple Macintosh and public-sector divisions, also working with the central and local government and small and medium-sized enterprise sectors. As a director, East was the UK executive responsible for the Education, Small Business and Home and Retail Division.

More recently, East was appointed worldwide general manager for the Microsoft Education Solutions Group, based in Seattle, Washington. After two years he returned to the UK and now manages the fastest-growing Microsoft education region: EMEA. In September 2005, East was awarded the Microsoft achievement award for sustained high level contributions to Microsoft leadership in the Education Community.

An advocate of the Microsoft vision of a Connected Learning Community and executive sponsor of the Anytime Anywhere Learning initiative; East is passionate about how technology can support the process of learning and help build connected learning communities.

East’s group is responsible for preparing the next generation of IT users, so he works closely with Microsoft Research and has good insight into future technological innovation.

Before joining Microsoft, East was sales and marketing manager for a Microsoft partner specialising in sales to education and government markets.

In his spare time, East enjoys playing football every week and spending time with his three children. He is an ardent supporter of the UK football club Queens Park Rangers (QPR), having worked for the club in his youth. He is “still” learning to play golf. Mark is currently personally funding the building of a secondary school on Mauta island, Lake Victoria in Kenya.