Thursday, January 14, 2021

Ginni M. Rometty

Executive Chairman, IBM

Charles Phillips

Managing Partner & Co-Founder, RECOGNIZE
Trustee, The ECNY

Moderator:
Shartia Brantley
Bloomberg News Deputy Bureau Chief
Bloomberg Live Senior Editor for the Americas

Virginia M. (Ginni) Rometty
Former Chairman, President and CEO, IBM

Ginni is a leader, innovator, and convener who believes in changing the way we do business to create equitable and inclusive workforces, advocating for companies to act as responsible stewards in creating a better tomorrow, and mentoring the next generation of leaders. Ginni is the current co-chairman of @OneTen and the former executive chairman and CEO of IBM.

During her tenure at IBM, Ginni made bold changes to reposition the company for the future. Under her leadership, IBM acquired 65 companies, including Red Hat, the largest acquisition in the company's history. She reinvented more than 50 percent of IBM's portfolio, built a $21 billion hybrid cloud business and established IBM's leadership in AI, quantum computing and blockchain, while divesting nearly $10 billion in annual revenue to focus the portfolio on IBM’s high-value, integrated offerings.

Ginni also established IBM as the model of responsible stewardship in the digital age. She was the industry's leading voice on technology ethics and data stewardship, working to safely usher new technologies into society. She enabled people of diverse backgrounds and education levels to participate in the digital economy by building talent, skills and opportunity for disadvantaged populations. IBM also achieved record results in diversity and inclusion under Ginni’s leadership.

Ginni held a series of leadership positions across IBM and led the successful integration of PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, creating a global team of more than 100,000 business consultants and services experts.

Ginni has a Bachelor of Science degree with high honors in computer science and electrical engineering from Northwestern University, where she later was awarded an honorary degree. She also has honorary degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and North Carolina State University.

She serves on the Council on Foreign Relations, the Board of Trustees of Northwestern University, where she is Vice Chair, and the Board of Trustees for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. She is a member of the advisory board of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management and a member of the Singapore Economic Development Board International Advisory Council.