Virginia (Ginni) Marie Rometty

The first woman to serve as Chairman and CEO of IBM, Rometty held the positions of Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of IBM. She was appointed President and CEO effective January 1, 2012 and became Chairman of the Board of Directors on October 1, 2012. Prior to this, Rometty held the positions of Senior Vice President and Group Executive for Sales, Marketing, and Strategy at IBM beginning in January 2012.

She was named to Fortune magazine's "50 Most Powerful Women in Business" for eight consecutive years, ranking #1 for 2012, and was ranked #15 on Forbes magazine's "World's 100 Most Powerful Women" for the same year. Rometty was also named to the Time 100 in 2012, and was included in the 50 Most Influential list of Bloomberg Markets magazine in September 2012.

She graduated from the Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University in 1979 with high honors, receiving a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. She was a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, eventually serving as its President. After graduation in 1979, Rometty went to work for General Motors Institute; in 1981, she joined IBM as a Systems Engineer in its Detroit office.

She joined IBM's Consulting Group in 1991 and in 2002 "championed the purchase of the big business consulting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, for $3.5 billion." Rometty became Senior Vice President and Group Executive for Sales, Marketing and Strategy in 2009. She is "credited with spearheading IBM's growth strategy by getting the company into the cloud computing and analytics businesses." She was also at the helm of readying Watson, the Jeopardy TV game playing computer, for commercial use.

On October 25, 2011, IBM announced that she was to be the company's next President and CEO, with Sam Palmisano stepping down but retaining his position as Chairman. Her appointment marked the first time a woman had been CEO of IBM. Regarding her promotion, Palmisano stated, "Ginni got it because she deserved it...It's got zero to do with progressive social policies." On September 26, 2012, IBM announced that Rometty would take on the added role of Chairwoman of IBM, as Samuel Palmisano prepared to retire at the end of 2012. She commenced her duty as Chairwoman and CEO of IBM on October 1, 2012.

Rometty has served on the Board of Trustees of her alma mater Northwestern University, as well as on the Board of Overseers of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and on The Deming Cup's committee at Columbia Business School, which recognizes individuals for operational excellence. She also served on the Board of Directors of AIG from 2006 until 2009. She is married to Mark Anthony Rometty, a principal investor in the Balm Oil Company.