Luba Cherbakov

Co-inventor and chief evangelist behind Service-Oriented Modeling and Architecture (SOMA), the industry's first SOA modeling method, Cherbakov is also a 2012 IBM Fellow — the 13th woman (and among only seventeen women) to achieve this distinction, the highest honor a scientist, engineer, or programmer at IBM can achieve. Her winding journey to becoming an IBM Fellow began with her decision to leave her native Ukraine. She stated, "In the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was a short window of opportunity when the Soviet Union allowed people of Jewish descent to emigrate to the West. My family is of Jewish heritage. I wanted to escape state-sponsored persecution of Jews and I knew I'd have more opportunity outside of the Soviet Union. I was young and had no fear. It was hard to leave my parents, but I knew it was the right decision."

With a two-year-old daughter in tow, she moved to the United States, first settling in Maryland. Cherbakov waited tables to make ends meet while earning a degree in Computer Science at the University of Maryland, then continued her graduate studies at George Washington University. "My English was poor, so it wasn't easy. But I was very determined and carried my Russian-English dictionary everywhere," she said. "I had a great love for math and science I had inherited from my father, who was a machinist and loved to do math brain teasers with me."

After walking away from an initial job opportunity at IBM, she worked for several smaller IT firms as a Solutions Architect before joining IBM's services arm. She joined IBM's fledgling business innovation services, working on first-of-a-kind on demand, e-business, and grid computing solutions for clients in various industries, and helped establish IBM's presence in these new market segments. Cherbakov spearheaded, co-invented, and served as the chief evangelist behind the development and deployment of SOMA. IBM services practitioners use it to architect solutions in a consistent, repeatable way.

Other areas where she has made significant contributions include Rivers-for-Tomorrow, Situational Applications Environment, The Genographic Project, and IBM Virtual Spaces. Her groundbreaking research has helped IBM and its clients improve their internal operations while supporting growth in the marketplace. She also helped establish IBM's presence in security services and has been at the forefront of IBM's transition into a social business.

Many of the On Demand Workplace features IBMers used on a daily basis — from expertise locator to w3 tagging to media library — were her handiwork, developed alongside the CIO innovation team she led for several years. One of her personal favorites was Faces, a popular people search tool and the first IBM application to employ Hadoop, the Java-based distributed platform which, she boasted, had "More than 130,000 distinct users a month. Once employees try it, they love it." Cherbakov and her avatar became well known in IBM Virtual Spaces, and she has spoken to clients about how social software and virtual worlds can promote collaboration across a global enterprise.

She applied her expertise in 3-D technology and spatial modeling to the IBM partnership with The Nature Conservancy on the Rivers for Tomorrow Project, a site where watershed managers can model and analyze the health of local freshwater river basins. In her role as Vice President of MobileFirst Technology Innovation in the IBM Global Technology Services, Cherbakov has been a driving force behind the creation and use of emerging technologies that enabled the business transformation of both IBM and its clients. She subsequently took on a corporate role as Director of Technology Evaluation, working with other technical leaders across IBM to identify disruptive technologies and align the company's technical resources behind IBM's key growth plays.

A mentor, teacher, and sponsor, she is a highly regarded technical leader whose expertise has been sought by customers and technical practitioners alike. Cherbakov is a three-time recipient of the IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award and a recipient of the IBM Corporate Award — the highest technical award for unique technical contributions of superior business value. She has also been a member of the IEEE Computer Society, the Society of Women Engineers, and the Association for Computing Machinery. A sought-after speaker and widely quoted author, she holds multiple internal and external publications and patents to her name, and has been profiled by traditional and web media, including CIO magazine, GovInfo Security news, Manager Monthly magazine, and ZDNet.