Ginni Rometty

Virginia Marie Rometty (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 of IBM, becoming the first woman to head the company. She retired from IBM on December 31, 2020, after a near-40 year career there. 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. As CEO, she focused IBM on analytics, cloud computing, and cognitive computing systems.

Rometty's tenure as IBM's CEO was marked by awards including by Bloomberg's 50 Most Influential People in the World,

Early life and education Ginni Rometty was born on July 29, 1957, in Chicago, Illinois, as Virginia Nicosia.

She began attending Northwestern University in Illinois in 1975 on a scholarship from General Motors, where she interned between her junior and senior years. and Northwestern University (2015). She also received an honorary degree from North Carolina State University.

Career 1979–1990s: GM and IBM technical positions After graduation in 1979, Rometty went to work for General Motors Institute where she worked with clients in insurance, banking, telecommunications, manufacturing and health care. and launched IBM in the services business.

2012–2020: Leadership of IBM On October 25, 2011, IBM announced that she was to be the company's next president and CEO, Rometty had IBM spend $8.5 billion acquiring around 30 companies between 2012 and 2015, 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. 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.

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. On January 30, 2020, it was announced that Rometty would be stepping down as IBM's CEO to be replaced by Arvind Krishna. She remained executive chairman until December 31, 2020, when she was replaced by Arvind Krishna.

Boards and committees

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, She remains on the board of overseers and board of managers and since 2013 Rometty is on the Council on Foreign Relations and is also on the board of trustees of her alma mater Northwestern University, In November 2017, she co-chaired WEF Davos.

She also is the co-chair of the Aspen Institute’s Cyber Group, 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. In May 2020, she was elected to the board of JPMorgan Chase.

Industry reception

Rometty's tenure as IBM CEO has been marked by prestigious rankings, including by Bloomberg, who named her among the 50 Most Influential People in the World in 2012. She was also named to the Time 100 list in 2012, and in 2014 Rometty was featured in the PBS documentary The Boomer List. Since 2005 she has been listed among Fortune's "50 Most Powerful Women in Business", ranking in the top 10 since 2010. She was named to Forbes magazine's "World's 100 Most Powerful People" in 2014, and she also ranked No. 11 on the 2016 Forbes list of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women. The following year she ranked No. 10. She was named the sixth most important person in tech by Time magazine in March 2018.

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. Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, and 24/7 Wallstreet. She was criticized by investors for 22 consecutive quarters of revenue decline between 2012 and the summer of 2017, and offshoring.

Personal life Virginia Nicosia married Mark Anthony Rometty, a private-equity investor, in 1979.