Virginia Rometty is Named CEO of IBM

It is Sad That This News is News

IBM chose a new CEO, naming Virginia Rometty to the post. 



Virginia M. Rometty, 54, will succeed Samuel J. Palmisano
as the next chief executive of I.B.M. at the start of next year.



Virginia M. Rometty, a senior vice president at I.B.M., will be the company’s next chief executive, the directors announced on Tuesday. She will succeed Samuel J. Palmisano, who will remain as chairman, at the start of next year.

Ms. Rometty looks like a logical choice for the position.  Her opposition was 60 years old, an age at which most CEO’s of IBM are leaving that position.  Her accomplishments seem impressive.

For much of the last decade, Ms. Rometty has led the growth and development of I.B.M.’s huge services business. She championed the purchase of the big business consulting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, for $3.5 billion in 2002. Ms. Rometty was then put in charge of coordinating the work of the acquired firm’s consultants with I.B.M.’s technologists, to tailor services and software offering for specific industries. “She did the deal, and she made it work,” Mr. Palmisano said.

So what is the sad part?  It is this

The selection of Ms. Rometty for the top job at I.B.M. will make her one of the highest-profile women executives in corporate America, joining a small group of women chief executives that includes Ursula Burns of Xerox, Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo, Ellen J. Kullman of DuPont and Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard.

Gender, according to Mr. Palmisano, did not figure into Ms. Rometty’s selection. “Ginni got it because she deserved it,” Mr. Palmisano said in an interview, using the informal first name by which she is known to friends and colleagues.

Yes it is sad that even now the gender issue has to be remarked upon in a fairly standard story about business.  Hopefully the promotion of Ms. Rometty will be a step towards the time when a story like this can be written, and the issue of gender is never mentioned.