The software maker told its executive staff in an email that Zain Nadella had passed away. Zain was born with cerebral palsy.
File photo of Satya Nadella. Reuters
Microsoft Corp said Zain Nadella, son of Chief Executive Officer Satya and his wife Anu, died Monday morning. He was 26 years old. Zain was born with cerebral palsy.
In an email, the company informed its top personnel that Zain had passed away. Microsoft executives were requested to keep Satya Nadella’s family in their thoughts and prayers while providing them space to grieve privately, according to the statement.
Since taking over as CEO of Microsoft in 2014, Nadella has steered the company towards designing products to better serve users with disabilities and cited lessons he learned raising and supporting his son Zain, reports Bloomberg.
In October 2017, Satya Nadella talked about the birth of his son in a blogpost.
“One night, during the thirty-sixth week of her pregnancy, Anu noticed that the baby was not moving as much as she was accustomed to. So we went to the emergency room of a local hospital in Bellevue. We thought it would be just a routine checkup, little more than new parent anxiety. In fact, I distinctly remember feeling annoyed by the wait times we experienced in the emergency room. But upon examination, the doctors were alarmed enough to order an emergency cesarean section. Zain was born at 11:29 p.m. on August 13, 1996, all of three pounds. He did not cry,” he wrote.
“Zain was transported from the hospital in Bellevue across Lake Washington to Seattle Children’s Hospital with its state-of-the-art Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Anu began her recovery from the difficult birth. I spent the night with her in the hospital and immediately went to see Zain the next morning. Little did I know then how profoundly our lives would change. Over the course of the next couple of years we learned more about the damage caused by in utero asphyxiation, and how Zain would require a wheelchair and be reliant on us because of severe cerebral palsy. I was devastated. But mostly I was sad for how things turned out for me and Anu.”
Last year, the Children’s Hospital, where Zain received much of his treatment, joined with the Nadellas to establish the Zain Nadella Endowed Chair in Pediatric Neurosciences, as part of Seattle Children’s Center for Integrative Brain Research.
Jeff Sperring, CEO of Children’s Hospital, wrote in a message to his board, “Zain will be remembered for his eclectic taste in music, his bright sunny smile and the immense joy he brought to his family and all those who loved him.
With inputs from agencies
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