By Nigeria Magazine — Business Desk
Meet Asha Sharma, EVP and CEO of Xbox, the business behind $23.5 billion in gaming revenue in fiscal 2025.
Her story starts far from the boardroom. She was born in Racine, Wisconsin, to a mother who worked at a department store, and she worked on a golf course as a teenager⛳️ At 17 she started at S.C. Johnson. By the time she left college she had also worked at Cargill, Deloitte and Microsoft. Then came Porch, Meta, Instacart, and a return to Microsoft to lead CoreAI product. Her philosophy: obsess over being great at the job in front of you, whether it’s selling coupon books or taking out the trash.
In February 2026, she succeeded Phil Spencer as CEO of Xbox, and critics noted she had no video game industry experience. Her answer was to do the work. She opened a gamertag, AMRAHSAHSA, to learn and understand the world she was about to lead. She says she came to gaming “as a platform builder.” 🎮
Today she runs a business that reaches more than 1️⃣ billion monthly players, with studios behind Halo, Minecraft and Call of Duty. The job is not easy. Xbox hardware revenue has fallen sharply, and in July she announced a major restructuring that included about 3,200 job cuts. Leading through hard calls is part of the story too.
Sheer grit. She did not wait to be the obvious choice. She made herself the only choice.
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