Ray Ozzie is an independent software entrepreneur and pioneer in social productivity, an area more known in the field as Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. He recently founded and serves as CEO of Talko, a startup focused on a new generation of mobile communications apps and services. Through late 2010 he was Chief Software Architect of Microsoft, the company’s most senior technical strategy & architecture role previously held by Bill Gates.

Ozzie came to Microsoft in 2005 through the acquisition of Groove Networks, a company he founded in 1997 to focus on software and services for small-team dynamic collaboration. Prior to Groove, in 1984 Ozzie founded and led Iris Associates, the creator and developer of Lotus Notes. A decade later, Iris was acquired by Lotus and then by IBM. Under his leadership during that period, Lotus Notes grew to be used for communication & social productivity by hundreds of millions at most major enterprises worldwide. Before creating Notes, he worked on 1-2-3 and Symphony at Lotus, on VisiCalc and TK!Solver at Software Arts, and on operating systems at Data General.

Ozzie studied computer science & engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he has been honored as a distinguished alumnus. It was there where he first took in the significance of online community and social interactive systems as a systems developer on the seminal PLATO project.

Honored as one of seven Windows Pioneers by Microsoft, Ozzie was named Person of the Year by PC Magazine, and has been inducted into the Computer Museum Industry Hall of Fame. He has been honored as a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer and has received numerous awards including the IEEE Computer Society's W. Wallace McDowell Award and the SDForum Visionary Award. In 2004 Ozzie was inducted as a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and in 2010 he was named as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

He currently serves on the board of directors of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), has served as a member of the National Research Council's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, and was a member of the NRC committee that produced the landmark CRISIS report on the societal impact of cryptography.