Satya Nadella:

Both my wife and I were the only children in our family, and we were very excited. The entire family was very excited. I was 29 years old before Zain was born.

Even a few hours before, perhaps, if you had asked me, you know, what are the thoughts that are going through my mind, they were mostly concerning things like, hey, will the nursery be ready, will Anu, my wife, go back to work?

And, of course, everything changed that night. There was in utero asphyxiation, as a result of which, Zain was born with some severe damage to his brain. And that resulted in cerebral palsy.

And maybe even for two years, maybe even longer, I went through this phase where I was mostly reflecting on all the things that happened to me, which is, wow, all the plans we had and I had are no longer valid. Why did this happen to us? Why did this happen to me?

And it was only by observing my wife and what came naturally to her — in fact, I remember, as she recovered from the C-section, she would, in fact, drive Zain from therapy to therapy, trying to give him the best chance he could get.

And without schooling me directly, though, by me observing her, I realized that nothing had happened to me. Something really had happened to Zain, and it was time for me to get over ruing the fact of what happened to me, and really start seeing the world through his eyes.

And that realization, which I used the word empathy for it, is not sort of an innate capability I had. It's life experiences like this one that helped shape that in me. And that, of course, is something that goes — carries forward in who I am at work.