Biography | Satya Nadella — The Gleacher Center He Reached from Seattle Every Weekend

People treat a Chicago Booth MBA as a two-year stretch on the Hyde Park quad.

The degree Satya Nadella finished in 1997 was taken downtown, on Friday nights and Saturdays, after a flight from Seattle.

The University of Chicago's own news office records the sequence.

In 1992 he was accepted at Booth and, in the same season, given his first Microsoft offer.

He deferred the school, took the job, then enrolled in the Weekend MBA Program.

The program runs two and a half years.

Students fly in on Friday, sit Saturday morning and afternoon, and fly home for the work week.

Gleacher Center at 450 North Cityfront Plaza Drive opened in 1994 on the north bank of the Chicago River, between Michigan Avenue and Columbus Drive.

It was named in 1996 after a gift from Eric Gleacher, class of 1967.

Booth still houses the Weekend and Evening MBA programs in this building.

Harper Center on Woodlawn Avenue, the full-time home, did not open until 2004.

A later Bloomberg note called the credential an Executive MBA; the university's own pages and catalog call it the Weekend MBA.

By the time the diploma was dated 1997 he had already been five years on the Microsoft payroll.

The pin is Gleacher Center, not a private hotel and not the later Hyde Park hall.

Photo: Mx. Granger, University of Chicago Gleacher Center, 2 June 2018, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.