Darren R. Huston (born 3 January 1966) is a Canadian businessman and the former president and chief executive officer (CEO) of

Priceline Priceline may refer to: * Priceline.com, a commercial website which helps users obtain discount rates for travel-related items such as airline tickets and hotel stays * The Priceline Group, a provider of online travel & related services, and a pare ...

and

Booking.com Booking.com, headquartered in Amsterdam, is one of the largest online travel agencies. It is a subsidiary of Booking Holdings. History In 1996, Geert-Jan Bruinsma, a student at Universiteit Twente, founded Bookings.nl. In 2000, Booking.com w ...

Early life

Darren R. Huston was born on 3 January 1966 in

Hope, British Columbia Hope is a district municipality at the confluence of the Fraser and Coquihalla rivers in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Hope is at the eastern end of both the Fraser Valley and the Lower Mainland region, and is at the southern end ...

, Canada. He completed his high school education at the

United World College of the Adriatic United World College of the Adriatic (''UWC Adriatic'' or ''UWCAd'' ) is a part of the United World Colleges, a global educational movement that brings together students from all over the world with the aim to foster peace and international un ...

in Italy, received a BS in economics from

Trent University Trent University is a public liberal arts university in Peterborough, Ontario, with a satellite campus in Oshawa, which serves the Regional Municipality of Durham. Trent is known for its Oxbridge college system and small class sizes.

, an MA in economics from the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks among the top thre ...

, and an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

from the Harvard Business School.

Career

From 1990 to 1992 Huston was an economic advisor in the Canadian government. From 1994 to 1998 he held an executive position with McKinsey & Company. From 1998 to 2003 he was a senior vice president at Starbucks. In 2005 he became president and CEO of

Microsoft Japan Microsoft Japan, officially , is a subsidiary of Microsoft based in Japan. Their headquarters are near to Shinagawa station at Minato-ku district of Tokyo. History In 1978, Kazuhiko Nishi, co-founder of ASCII Publisher, partnered with Bill ...

, and from 2008 served as

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

's corporate vice president, leading the company's consumer and online business. He joined Booking.com as CEO in September 2011, and became CEO of parent company Priceline on 1 January 2014. On 28 April 2016 he resigned as CEO of Priceline following an investigation relating to a personal relationship he had with an employee who was not under his direct supervision. He received no severance package and forfeited almost $15.3 million in unvested stock equity. Jeffery Boyd, Priceline's chairman and CEO from 2002 to 2013, took over as interim CEO.

References

Living people 1966 births People educated at a United World College University of British Columbia alumni Harvard Business School alumni Trent University alumni Canadian chief executives Businesspeople from British Columbia Booking Holdings people {{Canada-business-bio-stub