IBM Senior VP Ginni Rometty to Give IBM Centennial Lecture on March 11

Watching a streaming video of the lecture live.

Ginni Rometty, senior vice president and group executive for sales, marketing, and strategy for the IBM corporation, will give the IBM Centennial Lecture on Friday, March 11 at 10 a.m. The event is co-sponsored by the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and the Kellogg School of Management.

The lecture, titled “Lessons from a Century,” will take place in the McCormick Auditorium of the James L. Allen Center. In her speech, Rometty will outline key lessons learned over a century of industry leadership.  In particular, she will highlight the importance of driving high value growth and staying ahead of industry commoditization; implications of this for corporate culture and leadership; and the value of serving a purpose beyond the immediate corporate bottom-line. These lessons provide insight into critical success factors for the next century, and Rometty will highlight how they inform everything from IBM's Smarter Planet strategy to the development of the IBM supercomputer, "Watson," which recently competed on the game show Jeopardy.

In her position, Rometty is accountable for revenue, profit, and client satisfaction in the 170 global markets in which IBM does business. In this role, she is responsible for IBM's worldwide results, which exceeded $99 billion in 2010. She also is responsible for leading IBM’s global strategy, marketing and communications functions.

Previously, Rometty was the senior vice president of IBM Global Business Services. During her tenure, Rometty led the successful integration of PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting — the largest acquisition in professional services history, building a global team of more than 100,000 business consultants and service experts.

Rometty reports to the IBM chairman. She has been named to Fortune magazine's “50 Most Powerful Women in Business” for six consecutive years, including most recently in 2010.