Chairmen of the Board: 10 Most Powerful African Americans Directing U.S. Corporations

John Thompson, Independent Chairman, Microsoft

Thompson, an active investor in early-stage technology companies, is the current CEOÂ of privately held Virtual Instruments, whose products are designed to ensure the performance and availability of applications deployed in virtualized and private cloud computing environments. Thompson joined Microsoft’s board in 2012 and became independent chairman in 2014.