I’m sure you know the details, but I’ll briefly go over them just in case you don’t. IBM recently named Virginia Rometty as their new CEO. She’s been with the company since 1981 when she was hired as an engineer. For the last 30 years, she’s been using that big beautiful brain of hers, her sophisticated good looks, and the skills she was gifted with at birth in order to elevate herself to CEO of a fortune 500 tech company. Yes, not only is she now the CEO of a fortune 500 company, but she’s also the first woman to be CEO of IBM since it started 100 years ago in 1911. Similarly, Heather Bresch was recently named CEO of Mylan Inc. and last month Meg Whitman was named CEO of Hewlett-Packard. That means that two of the largest technology companies that exist right now have female CEOs and that pushes the total number of female CEOs that work for fortune 500 companies up to 18. Sounds small, but it’s a pretty big step for us.
Rometty becoming CEO is fabulous for several reasons, the first being that she not only became CEO in a male-dominated industry, but she became CEO of a company known for its extremely low number of woman executives within that male-dominated industry. Not only that, but IBM managed to stay away from women for nearly 100 years. That’s hard to do. In addition, because this gender change is such a big deal due to IBM’s history, Rometty and her new role at the company is extremely visible. A hot topic if you will. Ideally, she’ll inspire more young women to study computer technologies, work in IT jobs, and know that they can be executives at fortune 500 tech companies or any company they want, because honestly, those things aren’t at the top of the to-do list for most ladies. Speaking as a lady who works in an extremely male-dominated industry, I can tell you stories that would make you fall out of your chair and have you nodding your head in agreement that sometimes the fight for gender equality just takes a lot out of you. Rometty made a path and gifts the idea of possibility to other women.
Rometty’s accomplishment is huge, and the trail she and other female CEOs created will hopefully start pulling the younger generation of ladies into other corners of the executive work force along with the other dark and damp bits of industry that have yet to be touched significantly by women. I’m inspired by her path and hope it means that in the near future “were you sexually abused” won’t be a question included in my interviews and that potential employers won’t say things like, “I’m not sure why you want to work in this industry. Guess it’s because of all the men.”
So thank you, Virginia Rometty. I appreciate the work you’ve done to even the playing field for all us ladies, and I hope that in the near future, enormous accomplishments that women make won’t have to be identified as a breakthrough for our gender, but rather that they will simply be par for the course.
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