Colette Kress

She holds a B.Sc. degree in finance from the University of Arizona and an MBA from Southern Methodist University.⁠[1]

Her LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry profile lists her education as an MBA in finance at the SMU Cox School of Business from 1994 to 1996.⁠[2]

Before joining MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft is a technology company founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, with businesses spanning Windows, Microsoft 365, Azure, enterprise software, artificial intelligence, gaming and devices.Open the full entry, she spent eight years at Texas Instruments, where she held a variety of finance positions.⁠[3]

From 1997 to 2010 she held a variety of positions at Microsoft, including, beginning in 2006, chief financial officer of the Server and Tools division, where she was responsible for the division’s financial strategy, planning, reporting and business development.⁠[3]

NVIDIA’s official biography states that her 13 years at Microsoft included four years as chief financial officer of the Server and Tools division and senior roles in corporate planning and finance.⁠[1]

Her LinkedIn profile lists her position at Microsoft as Corporate VP, from April 2006 to November 2010.⁠[2][4]

The Server and Tools business sold Windows Server, SQL Server and Visual Studio; Satya NadellaSatya NadellaSatya Nadella is a business executive who serves as chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft; his leadership career spans cloud computing, developer platforms, corporate acquisitions, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry took over the business in 2011, after she had left. A GeekWire search of Seattle-area news archives found a single mention of her name from her Microsoft years: a 2007 press release that listed her as a presenter at a seminar on Microsoft’s budgeting software.⁠[4]

From 2010 she was senior vice president and chief financial officer of the Business Technology and Operations Finance organization at CiscoCiscoCisco Systems, Inc. is an American networking technology company, incorporated in 1984, headquartered in San Jose, California, and listed on Nasdaq.Open the full entry, responsible for financial strategy, planning, reporting and business development for all business segments, engineering and operations.⁠[3]

Her LinkedIn profile gives the dates of this position as November 2010 to September 2013.⁠[2]

On September 11, 2013, NVIDIA’s board of directors appointed her executive vice president and chief financial officer, in which capacity she would also serve as the company’s principal financial officer, contingent on her starting work later that month; the filing gives her age as 46. Karen T. Burns stepped down as interim chief financial officer and continued as the company’s vice president, corporate controller and tax.⁠[3]

NVIDIA announced the appointment on September 16, 2013, describing her as a 24-year veteran of the tech industry who would report to Jensen Huang, the president and chief executive officer. Huang said in the announcement that the company had searched extensively for the right candidate.⁠[5]

Her offer letter provided for employment at will, a base salary of $500,000 a year and a target annual incentive of 110 percent of base salary; a sign-on bonus of $1.5 million and a further bonus of $1 million on the first anniversary of her start, each repayable if she left within a set period; and a grant of 220,000 restricted stock units vesting over four years.⁠[3]

The appointment ended a search for a chief financial officer that had lasted more than two years.⁠[4]

In a 2023 interview with Globes she said that Huang recruited her personally, sketching his vision for the company on a whiteboard, and that her two sons, then young and familiar with the company whose chips ran their computer games, “advised” her to join.⁠[6]

In a Fortune interview published in April 2022 she said that when she joined NVIDIA it was the smallest company she had ever worked for, and that as it grew quickly her focus was on making the company ready to scale and on having finance and its sister organizations revise processes and build digital solutions.⁠[7]

She described NVIDIA as a horizontal company in which the person who knows a project best should be heard whatever their title, and said that its leaders aim for intellectual honesty, agility and the removal of bureaucracy.⁠[7]

She said that she had not always aimed to be a chief financial officer: “I was just always fascinated by somebody else’s role,” and sometimes that role was her boss’s.⁠[7]

The Israeli business publication Globes published an interview with her on July 23, 2023, which the article described as her first with Israeli media and her first with global media since NVIDIA reached a market capitalization of $1 trillion; it gave her age as 56. She said that NVIDIA was her fourth company in a 35-year career.⁠[6]

She said that the company does not focus on its share price: “One of the things we don’t focus on is the stock price”; on the day the market capitalization reached $1 trillion, the team said it was time to get back to work. She added that more investors now understand the company, and called this the “supermarket test”: people now recognize the NVIDIA name.⁠[6]

She said that her working day begins with meetings with the company’s executives in Israel; the article states that about 12 percent of NVIDIA’s employees, some 3,200 people, work at six locations in Israel. She called the acquisition of Mellanox one of the best she had seen in the industry.⁠[6]

On competition she said that NVIDIA does not sell hardware alone and that no rival had established the same development platform; on a possible tightening of United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry export controls on China she said that the company did not know what it would entail, and called China a very important region whose loss would hurt NVIDIA and the industry mainly in the long term.⁠[6]

A Fortune article of June 19, 2024, quoted the analyst Dan IvesDan IvesDan Ives (Daniel Ives) is a technology equity research analyst who served as managing director and global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities from 2018 to 2026. In July 2026 he formed the merchant bank Yorkville Ives & Co. with Yorkville Securities and became its partner and senior managing director.Open the full entry, then a managing director at Wedbush Securities, as saying that her leadership as chief financial officer “has been instrumental in Nvidia’s success with Wall Street”; he also said that she was extremely well respected inside NVIDIA and across the tech industry.⁠[8]

After NVIDIA announced results for the second quarter of fiscal 2025 she gave an interview to The Next Platform. Asked how she plans for growth in an uncertain climate, she said that the biggest part of planning is planning capital to design and build more products across the business, and said: “We do not waste a day, we don’t waste a dime.” She added that the shift to accelerated computing and artificial intelligence would take decades.⁠[9]

She was No. 49 on the 2026 Fortune Most Powerful Women list.⁠[10]

On the earnings call of May 20, 2026, she said that “AI is no longer a nice-to-have” but a necessity for enhancing productivity across all industries and roles; NVIDIA’s revenue for the quarter ended April 26, 2026, was a record $81.6 billion.⁠[10]

On November 11, 2026, NVIDIA’s board of directors accepted the resignation of Jensen Huang as president, chief executive officer and director, effective immediately, and appointed her interim chief executive officer while the board conducts a search for a new chief executive; she continues as executive vice president and chief financial officer. The filing gives her age as 59. On the same day the board appointed Harvey C. JonesHarvey C. JonesHarvey C. Jones is an American entrepreneur and investor in electronic design automation who co-founded Daisy Systems in 1981, led Synopsys from 1987 to 1998 and co-founded Tensilica in 1997. An NVIDIA director since 1993, he became NVIDIA’s first-ever chair of the board on November 11, 2026.Open the full entry, a director since 1993, as chair of the board.⁠[11]

NVIDIA announced the changes on November 12, 2026, stating that the board was beginning a search for a permanent chief executive officer and would consider internal and external candidates, and that Harvey C. Jones was the company’s first chair of the board. Jones said in the announcement that the board had full confidence in her and the leadership team. She said in the announcement that the company’s focus remained on serving its customers, partners, developers and shareholders.⁠[12]

On the same day she signed NVIDIA’s Form 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionU.S. Securities and Exchange CommissionThe U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is the federal securities regulator of the United States. Created during the Great Depression by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and led by five commissioners, it has a three-part mission of protecting investors, maintaining fair, orderly and efficient markets, and facilitating capital formation.Open the full entry as interim chief executive officer, executive vice president and chief financial officer.⁠[11]

In a memo to employees that day she wrote that the company had been through an extraordinarily difficult period, and thanked employees for their resilience, professionalism and continued dedication.⁠[13]

The analyst Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives & Co.Yorkville Ives & Co.Yorkville Ives & Co. is a U.S. merchant bank and registered broker-dealer formed in July 2026 by technology analyst Dan Ives and Yorkville Securities. Headquartered in New Jersey, it offers capital raising, co-investment, research, strategic advisory, and institutional trading services.Open the full entry wrote in a note on the morning of November 12, 2026, that she had built “enormous credibility” inside and outside NVIDIA. NVIDIA is scheduled to report results for the third quarter of fiscal 2027 on November 17, 2026.⁠[4][12]

A Fortune article of November 12, 2026, states that her base salary for fiscal 2026 was $900,000 and her total compensation $16 million, and that NVIDIA grew from about 8,000 employees when she joined to more than 40,000.⁠[14]

In fiscal 2014, the year in which she joined NVIDIA and which ended on January 26, 2014, the company’s revenue was $4.13 billion, against $4.28 billion in the previous fiscal year; in fiscal 2026, which ended on January 25, 2026, revenue was $215.938 billion.⁠[15][16]

Texas Instruments: Official website: https://www.ti.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[17]

Microsoft: Official website: https://www.microsoft.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[18]

Cisco: Official website: https://www.cisco.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[19]

NVIDIA: Official website: https://www.nvidia.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[20]

LinkedIn: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/colette-kress-22328346/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2][4]