Ginni Rometty | |
|---|---|
 Rometty in 2011 | |
| Born | Virginia Marie Nicosia (1957-07-29)July 29, 1957 (age 68) Chicago, [Illinois, U.S. |
| Education | Northwestern University (BS) |
| Spouse | Mark Rometty (1979–present) |
Virginia Marie Rometty[1] (born July 29, 1957) is an American business executive who was executive chairman of IBM after stepping down as CEO on April 1, 2020. She was previously chairman, president and CEO ofIBM, becoming the first woman to head the company. She retired from IBM on December 31, 2020, after a near-40 year career there.[2][3][4] Before becoming president and CEO in January 2012, she first joined IBM as a systems engineer in 1981 and subsequently headed global sales, marketing, and strategy.[5][6]
While general manager of IBM's global services division, in 2002 she helped negotiate IBM's purchase ofPricewaterhouseCoopers' IT consulting business, becoming known for her work integrating the two companies.[7][8] As CEO, she focused IBM on analytics,cloud computing, and cognitive computing systems.[9][10]
Rometty's tenure as IBM's CEO was marked by awards including byBloomberg's50 Most Influential People in the World,[11]Fortune's "50 Most Powerful Women in Business",Time's 20 Most Important People in Tech andForbes' America's Top 50 Women In Tech.[12][13][6][14][15] Her tenure was also met by fierce criticism relating to executive compensation bonuses, layoffs, outsourcing, and presiding over 24 consecutive quarters of revenue decline.[16][17][18]
Ginni Rometty was born on July 29, 1957, inChicago,Illinois, as Virginia Nicosia.[19][20][4] Growing up outside Chicago, she was the eldest of four children in anItalian-American family.[5] Her parents divorced and her father left when she was fifteen years old, and her mother subsequently took on multiple jobs to support the family while Rometty looked after the household in the evenings.[20][19][21]
She began attendingNorthwestern University in Illinois in 1975 on a scholarship fromGeneral Motors, where she interned between her junior and senior years.[21] Rometty was also a member of theKappa Kappa Gamma sorority, eventually becoming its president.[8] She graduated with high honors from theRobert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University in 1979,[20][6] receiving a bachelor's degree incomputer science andelectrical engineering.[22][20] She has received honorary doctoral degrees fromRensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2014)[23] andNorthwestern University (2015).[24] She also received an honorary degree fromNorth Carolina State University.[25]
After graduation in 1979, Rometty went to work forGeneral Motors Institute[22] inFlint,[8] where she was responsible for application and systems development.[6] In 1981 she joinedIBM as asystems analyst[19] andsystems engineer in Detroit.[22][8] Initially working with clients in the insurance industry,[7] she spent her first ten years at IBM in technical positions.[19]The New York Times writes that she "quickly moved up to a series of management jobs",[26] where she worked with clients in insurance, banking, telecommunications, manufacturing and health care.[8][26] She spent the 1990s working in sales,[8] and by the late 1990s was helping clients such asPrudential Financial, Inc. with their internet features.[7] She joined IBM's Consulting Group in 1991.[26]
While general manager of IBM's global services division,[8] in 2002 she championed[26] and helped negotiate the purchase of Monday, the consulting arm of the professional services firmPricewaterhouseCoopers[8] for $3.5 billion.[26][14] The acquisition was the "largest in professional services history"[27] and launched IBM in the services business.[14] While senior vice president of IBM Global Business Services,[4][27] Rometty then received her "big break"[19] at IBM when she was given the task of integrating PricewaterhouseCoopers and its consultants with IBM.[7] In 2002,Time named her in its 2002 Global Business Influential list. From 2005 until 2009, she was the senior vice president of Global Business Services at IBM, and she also became senior vice president of Enterprise Business Services-IBM Global Services in July 2005.[6] Among other roles, she was general manager of IBM Global Services, Americas, as well as general manager of IBM's Global Insurance and Financial Services Sector.[6][27] She was also a managing partner at IBM Business Consulting Services, Inc. and general manager of Insurance Industry Group.[6] She received the Carl Sloane Award 2006 from the Association of Management Consulting Firms.[6][27]
Laid out by Rometty and other IBM executives,[8][4] in 2007 IBM announced[5] a five-year growth plan[14] concerning revenue growth and capital allocation.[5] Among other strategies, the "2015 Roadmap"[8][4] outlined moving IBM away from the hardware industry to focus on businesses such as software and services.[4] She became senior vice president and group executive for sales, marketing and strategy in 2009,[26][22] focusing on the company's "fast-growing analytics unit".[26] In January 2009, she was placed in charge of IBM's sales force,[7] as senior vice president of global sales and distribution until 2010.[6] During this time, she pushed the development of IBM's growth-markets unit, which had been created in 2008 to focus on emerging markets such asBrazil andVietnam.[7] From 2010 until 2012 she was an IBM senior vice president, and from 2010 until 2012, she was IBM's Group Executive of Sales, Marketing & Strategy.[6] In 2011,CNN reported that she was "credited with spearheading IBM's growth strategy by getting the company into thecloud computing and analytics businesses. She was also at the helm of readyingWatson, theJeopardy! playing computer, for commercial use."[28]
On October 25, 2011, IBM announced that she was to be the company's next president and CEO,[22][4] becoming the ninth chief executive in its history.[22][8] Her role as IBM's first female chief received note in the press,[2] with former CEOSam Palmisano responding that her selection had "zero to do with progressive social policies".[26] She became president and CEO on January 1, 2012, also taking on the additional role of IBM chairman on October 1, 2012,[6] when Palmisano retired.[3] With plans to take IBM out of unprofitable business lines[21] and citingbig data andanalytics as IBM's "next big growth machine",[5] in 2014 she brokered a partnership forApple to design applications for IBM's enterprise customers. Later that year, she announced that IBM would partner withSAP on cloud computing and withTwitter on data analytics and, in 2015, she also brokered a partnership withBox.[29] Rometty had IBM spend $8.5 billion acquiring around 30 companies between 2012 and 2015,[9] and by 2016 she had overseen the divestment of about $7 billion in commoditized assets such as chip manufacturing.[18]
In May 2017,Austin Business reported that Rometty had successfully moved IBM away from "shrinking businesses such as computers and operating system software, and into higher-growth areas like artificial intelligence."[30][9][31][10] On June 28, 2017, she was awarded theKPMG Inspire Greatness Award.[32] In January 2018, she announced IBM's first quarter of year-over-year revenue increase since 2012, with particular growth in areas such as data,blockchain, and the cloud.[33] By 2018, she stated that around half of IBM's 9,043 patents in 2017 were in AI, cloud computing, cybersecurity, blockchain and quantum computing.[34]
However, the accolades and awards did not translate into marketplace success, and under Rometty's tenure, IBM's revenue declined over 40%, from over $100b in 2011 to less than $60b in 2019.[35] On January 30, 2020, it was announced that Rometty would be stepping down as IBM's CEO to be replaced byArvind Krishna. She remained executive chairman until December 31, 2020, when she was replaced by Arvind Krishna.[36]
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A director at IBM since 2012, Rometty has also been involved in IBM organizations such as its Women in Technology Council, Women's Executive Council, and Women's Leadership Council. A former director at APQC,[6] she also served on the board of directors ofAIG from 2006 until 2009.[37] She remains on the board of overseers and board of managers[6] for theMemorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center,[27][38] and since 2013[27] she has been a council member at theLatin America Conservation Council.[39] Rometty serves on theCouncil on Foreign Relations and is also on the board of trustees of heralma mater Northwestern University,[6][27] where she was commencement speaker for the graduating class of 2015.[24] She was a member of the White House's Business Advisory Panel for much of 2017, before the panel dissolved itself that August.[40] In November 2017, she co-chairedWEF Davos.[41]
She also serves as the co-chair of the Aspen Institute’s Cyber Group, a member of the advisory board ofTsinghua University School of Economics and Management, and a member of the Singapore Economic Development Board International Advisory Council.[42] In May 2020, she was elected to the board ofJPMorgan Chase.[43]
Rometty's tenure as IBM CEO has been marked by prestigious rankings, including byBloomberg, who named her among the50 Most Influential People in the World in 2012.[11] She was also named to theTime 100 list in 2012,[44] and in 2014 Rometty was featured in thePBS documentaryThe Boomer List.[45] Since 2005[6] she has been listed amongFortune's "50 Most Powerful Women in Business",[14][15] ranking in the top 10 since 2010.[32] After ranking No. 7 in 2011,[14] she ranked No. 1 from 2012[18][8] until 2014,[18][15] No. 3 in 2015,[9][18] No. 4 in 2016, and No. 7 in 2017.[46] She was named toForbes magazine's "World's 100 Most Powerful People" in 2014,[47] and she also ranked No. 11 on the 2016Forbes list ofThe World's 100 Most Powerful Women.[48] The following year she ranked No. 10.[49] She was named the sixth most important person in tech byTime magazine in March 2018.[13]
Rometty's tenure as CEO has met with criticism as well, during her tenure, IBM revenue dropped from $104 billion in 2012 to $60 billion in 2020.[18] By 2016, she had been named among the worst CEOs by publications including theMotley Fool,[50]Forbes,[51] theWall Street Journal,[52] and24/7 Wallstreet.[17] She was criticized by investors[53] for 22 consecutive quarters of revenue decline between 2012 and the summer of 2017,[10][16] and by IBM employees for accepting pay bonuses during times of layoffs[30] and offshoring.[18][54][17]
In May 2019, Rometty received theEdison Achievement Award for her commitment to innovation throughout her career.[55]
Virginia Nicosia married Mark Anthony Rometty,[56] a private-equity investor, in 1979.[5] With no children, they divide their time between New York and Naples, Florida.[56] She goes toBroadway shows and participates in scuba diving as a hobby.[8] In 2014, she became the third female member of theAugusta National Golf Club, following the lead ofCondoleezza Rice.[57]
Media related toGinni Rometty at Wikimedia Commons
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| Preceded by | CEO of IBM 2012–2020 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | President of IBM 2012–2020 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Executive Chairman of IBM 2012–2020 | Succeeded by |
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