Steven A. Denning is the Chairman Emeritus of General Atlantic LLC, a firm he joined in 1980 and has helped build into a leading global growth equity firm with $40 billion in assets under management and fourteen offices worldwide. 

Denning joined GA after working with McKinsey & Company. He received an M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1978. Prior to business school, Denning served for six years in the U.S. Navy, where he also earned an M.S. degree from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He received a B.S. from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1970, and an honorary doctorate in 2019. 

Denning is a member of the Board of Directors of College Advising Corps, the New York Regional Plan Association, the Markle Foundation, Blue Meridian Partners, Inc., and the National Park Foundation, as well as a member of its Executive Committee, and is vice chair of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Bridgespan Group, and a member of the Starr Companies Advisory Board. He is also a member of the Columbia Climate Board of Advisors, and a member of its Executive Committee. Denning is vice chair of the Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Advisory Council, chair of the Global Advisory Council to the President and the Natural Capital Advisory Council, all at Stanford University, and is a member of the Advisory Council of the Freeman Spogli Institute, the Knight-Hennessy Scholar Program Advisory Board and the Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute Advisory Council. 

Denning is former chairman of the Board of Trustees of Stanford University and former Co-Chair of the Board of Directors of The Nature Conservancy (TNC). He is emeritus chairman of the Stanford Graduate School of Business Advisory Council, and a lifelong trustee of The Brookings Institution, the American Museum of Natural History and the Georgia Tech Foundation. Denning was formerly a trustee of the National Parks Conservation Society. He is a life member and former member of the board of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a former member of the board of the McKinsey Investment Office Advisory Council, the Georgia Tech Foundation and National Advisory Board, the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University Advisory Board, the Cancer Research Institute, and the Connecticut Science Center. 

Denning grew up in Salt Lake City, UT. He and his wife, Roberta, currently reside in Greenwich, CT and San Francisco.