Robin Sutara: Unassuming Trailblazer

Robin Sutara (Witherell Class, 2010) has always been a trailblazer. Perhaps an unassuming trailblazer, but she has definitely carved out a career and life path that has taken her to extraordinary places and heights. Sutara, who twice graduated from Cooley, garnering her JD in 2010 and then returning for her Masters of Law in Intellectual Property and graduating in 2013, was named as Microsoft UK’s first Chief Data Officer in January 2021. She is responsible for collaborating with Microsoft’s customers throughout the UK, learning about how they leverage data and artificial intelligence, and working closely with them to create new solutions for a variety of functions and across multiple industries, including retail, banking and healthcare. Sutara has been with Microsoft for more than two decades, serving in a number of leadership positions on the way to her current role with the company. Sutara’s previous roles included consumer support engineer, technical account manager, business operations manager and chief of staff, where she was responsible for all operations and business management functions for the corporate vice president for the Azure Data engineering organization. Azure is a cloud computing service operated by Microsoft for applications management via Microsoft-managed data centers.