Jeanette Horan
Chief Information Officer, IBM

Born 1955 in Dover, England.

Jeanette Horan is CIO of IBM, a position she has held since May 2011. She has been a leader at IBM since 1998, when she began taking on portfolios of responsibility at the vice president level. She was in charge of development of the Lotus brand (1998–2002), followed by strategy for the Software Group (2003–2004), and then information management (2004–2006). She became vice president of Business Process and Architecture Integration (2006–2007) and then headed Enterprise Business Transformation (through April 2011).

Before coming to IBM, Ms. Horan was vice president of the Software Group and the AltaVista business unit at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC; 1994–1998). She was also vice president of Development and Engineering at the Open Software Foundation (1989–1994).

Ms. Horan has been a member of the board of directors of MicroVision in Redmond, Washington, since July 2006 and serves on the Audit and Compensation Committees. She is also in great demand as a keynote speaker and expert on corporate IT, CIO strategies and responsibilities, and women in leadership topics. Recent speaking engagements have included the CIO Executive Leadership Summit in Greenwich, Connecticut; the CIO Executive Summit in Dallas, Texas; the Global Women's International Networking Conference in Rome, Italy; Canada's Government Technology Exhibition and Conference in Ottawa, Canada; and Forrester Research's CIO-CMO Forum in Boston, Massachusetts to mention just a few recent examples.

In her early career, Ms. Horan worked for EMI (1976–1979), Singer-Link (1979–1981), and Gould Computer Systems (1981–1989).

Ms. Horan received an MBA from Boston University's School of Management Executive Education Program (1993) and a BS in mathematics from the University of London (1976).

Elizabeth Ghaffari: Can you tell me a little about your family—your parents and siblings?

Jeanette Horan: I grew up in the south of England where my parents both grew up. My father was a sales manager and my mother was a bookkeeper. I have one brother and one sister.

Ghaffari: You pursued a bachelor's of mathematics at the University of London. What were some of the factors that might have influenced your interest in math?

Horan: I knew I was good at math, and that I enjoyed it. It's probably accurate to say that I didn't know any better. I just decided it was a good grounding for any career that I might want to go into subsequently.

When I was at high school, I had something of a natural aptitude for math, and it happened that the headmistress of our school was a math teacher herself, so she was very encouraging to those with that aptitude.

Ghaffari: Any particular reason why you chose to attend University of London?

Horan: The higher-education application process in England has you select and prioritize six places in which you're interested. Different colleges specialize in different fields. I went to Royal Holloway College, within the University of London, which was known for math, music, history, and zoology. It is an interesting mix.

Ghaffari: Did you have interest beyond math?

Horan: No, I did three straight years of math classes, graduating in 1976.

Ghaffari: What was your first job?

Horan: I went to work for EMI, which you may know as a music company. I got the job through what they fondly call in England the “milk round,” which is when companies come on campus to recruit. At the time, EMI was much more of an industrial conglomerate. I was hired by their central research lab to work on medical ultrasound research doing digital signal processing.

I liked the field because it gave me my first substantive exposure to computers. Up until then, my experience with computers in college meant getting a bunch of punch cards and handing them over to the data center people. The work at EMI was much more hands-on, using minicomputers and working at the assembler language level. That's where I first became interested in the whole field of computer technology and in technology applications.

I stayed at EMI for only two and a half years, because they were going through a lot of business changes and had concluded that they did not want to stay in this area. I started to look around and spotted an advert in one of the computer papers for a company called Singer-Link, which built flight simulators used to train pilots. That was a huge amount of fun. My work there had a lot to do with keeping the systems operational in real time. The technology of the day was the 16-bit PDP11 from Digital Equipment Corporation, which had a very small amount of memory. That presented a pretty interesting set of technical challenges.

I was at Singer-Link from early 1979 until late 1981. I began working on systems from a company called Gould Computer Systems—one of the minicomputer manufacturers that was very strong in the real-time space. I developed a good understanding of their operating systems and core technologies and ended up moving to the United States to work for Gould.

That was an important turning point in my life.

Ghaffari: How long were you with Gould and why was it a transition?

Horan: I worked for Gould from 1981 to 1989. There were two things that made that period significant for me. One was that my two daughters were born during that time. The other thing was that I got my first management position. Gould was a company big enough to have a good management training and education program. I was very lucky to get that kind of exposure during a formative part of my career.

Ghaffari: Why do you think Gould thought you were good management material?

Horan: I had been in project leadership positions, but without the people management decisions. By the time I was promoted to my first management position, the company was growing very rapidly, expanding and hiring new people. I had developed or demonstrated some leadership capabilities through those project leadership experiences.

Ghaffari: Where did you meet your husband? When were your girls born?

Horan: I met my husband when I was working at Singer-Link in England. We worked in the same field. My daughters were born in 1983 and 1985, while I worked at Gould. They're now both PhD students. One is studying advanced developmental psychology, while the other one is in pure mathematics, doing research sponsored by the federal government.

Ghaffari: Family considerations were included in your decision to relocate to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Is that correct?

Horan: Yes, that's correct. Toward the end of 1989, Gould was sold to a Japanese company, and the Computer Systems Division was spun off due to the amount of federal government contract work. There was a lot of churn in the organization. My oldest daughter was just starting the first grade, and we decided that it was probably a good time to make a move both professionally and personally.

It happened that the same manager, Roger Gourd, who had hired me at Gould to relocate to the US from England, had left Gould, done some other work, and then ended up at the Open Software Foundation [OSF]¹ in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He recruited me to work for him, and my family relocated to Sudbury, Massachusetts.

Ghaffari: Do you consider Roger Gourd a mentor?

Horan: Yes, very definitely. Even after I left OSF, he still was somebody that I would go to for different kinds of advice at different points in time. I'd ask his advice on career choices or job changes. I consider him a good friend, as well.

After I left OSF, I went to work for Digital Equipment Corporation at a time when they appeared to have hit bottom and were bouncing back up, but then they took another downturn. I ended up leaving when Compaq acquired them. That was a very rocky period. It was very good to have somebody like Roger to whom I could talk about both the choices I was making around options within Digital and about my ultimate decision to leave.

Ghaffari: You were an engineering vice president and then a development vice president at OSF. What did those jobs entail?

Horan: They were primarily product development roles. The work included everything from development of strategy; for example, making decisions about what kinds of product we were going to build, what features would be included, and what the capabilities would be to delivery of the final product. And finally, figuring out how we'd deliver those products to market.

Ghaffari: How large a staff did you have?

Horan: When I was at Gould, I had a staff of about 150 people. When I was at the Open Software Foundation, it was about 300 people.

Ghaffari: Was OSF a not-for-profit entity?

Horan: Yes, OSF was an organization sponsored by a number of big companies in the industry. The business model is a shared R&D center, where several big companies were investing because they all wanted to use the same kind of technology, and it wasn't something that they expected they were going to compete on. That structure provided a way to amortize the R&D cost across several different companies. It was quite a visionary concept and in many ways a precursor to today's “open source software movement”—a way of sharing and disseminating knowledge. The idea has had its successes and its challenges as a business model.

Ghaffari: What is the story behind your move to Digital?

Horan: As I moved up into senior leadership roles at OSF, I began to realize that I was sitting at the table more and more with marketing, finance, and sales people, and not just other engineering people. I also began to realize that up to this point, I had been focused on engineering and that my knowledge was very deep, but also narrow. I decided I wanted to understand more about business, and so went for my MBA—an executive MBA at Boston University.

While in that program, a friend and classmate told me her husband was a vice president at Digital. He said to me, “If you ever decide you want to move, give me a call and come join Digital.” I thought it would be interesting to figure out how to operate in a larger company. Most of the companies where I'd worked before were relatively small. Digital, at that point, had about 125,000 employees. So, I took him up on his offer to arrange an introduction to Digital.

I stayed at Digital from April 1994 to May 1998, four years during which I had three different jobs and seven different bosses. I was a vice president in charge of the Software Group Strategy and then development for the AltaVista business unit. Those were the very early days of the internet. Digital had an e-mail product, a firewall product, and several other products related to the internet, including the search engine, all in the AltaVista business unit. The search engine became most closely linked to the AltaVista name.

It was a very tumultuous period in Digital's history, which culminated in the sale of the company to Compaq Computer Company in 1998.

Ghaffari: Did you observe that there were many women along the way in your career in technology?

Horan: Now, that's a really interesting question. Early on, no—there were very few women. When I was at EMI, there were two women in a research department of about fifty people. At Singer-Link, I think were four women among a staff of one hundred. So in both cases women were about 4 percent of the technical workforce in that department. When I came to the US, there were more, but it was still pretty small as a percentage.

Beginning with OSF, I noticed that there were beginning to be more women on staff, as well as women in management and leadership roles. I'm not sure whether that says something about Massachusetts or the fact that it was a collaborative environment or whether it was just the time and the place.

By the time I was at DEC, it just didn't seem to be as big an issue anymore. Progress was beginning to emerge.

Ghaffari: After Digital sold itself to Compaq, how did you make the transition to IBM?

Horan: I had been introduced by a friend to some of the people who were leaders in an organization called Iris Associates,² the wholly owned subsidiary of Lotus Development Corporation. When Lotus was looking for a new vice president to run some departments of their organization, the people at Iris introduced me to Lotus, saying, “You should talk to Jeanette.”

I wasn't actively out looking for a job. That was just before the acquisition of DEC by Compaq, so I was receptive to an opportunity and then decided to join.

There were a couple of things that interested me. To be honest, on the personal front, the job meant I could continue to live in the same place. I didn't have to move again, which was attractive to me since my children would not have to uproot themselves from school. Also, I was absolutely intrigued by the products, which presented a whole new paradigm about collaboration with Lotus Notes and Domino among other software developments. It was very appealing to me from a technology perspective. I became vice president of Development of IBM in charge of the Lotus brand and led worldwide product management, development, and technical support.

Ghaffari: You made quite a progression from nuts-and-bolts software engineering to strategic software development. How did that transformation happen?

Horan: Yes, it's interesting that I started out truly working on the bits and bytes of computers. Then I moved into operating systems and device drivers, which still were close to the hardware. AltaVista and Lotus Notes were more collaborative tools—information resources that allowed for searching and sharing across departments and, ultimately, companies. I definitely started to see possibilities—I think it was the advent of the internet that started me thinking, “Wait a minute. There's a whole new proposition here and some interesting opportunities to explore new areas.”

Ghaffari: Tell me how your people management responsibilities grew.

Horan: At Lotus, from May 1998 to December 2002, I had about three thousand people. I had all of product development and the technical support organization—all the people you call on the phone if you have a technical product question. The following year, I became vice president of strategy for the IBM Software Group. As vice president of all information management, over the next two and a half years, I was responsible for a staff of about four thousand people.

These were global roles. As the teams became more and more distributed, I had product development teams in China, Germany, and Canada, as well as throughout the US.

Ghaffari: So how did you feel about that international demand on your time and your physical stamina?

Horan: I actually found it to be great. I felt energized by having teams all over the place. Obviously, it made it tougher to manage a family if you're traveling that much, but it was something that we figured out how to work through, and everybody understood that it was something that was important. So, that's what we did.

Ghaffari: What are some of the key things you did to work that out, would you say?

Horan: Well, living three thousand miles away from my own family in the UK meant that I didn't have that kind of close-knit support network. But, my husband and I would figure out mutual travel schedules. If I had to go somewhere, was he going somewhere? And how would we manage that? I did have a small network of friends whom we could call upon in an absolute emergency, and we had a nanny until my eldest daughter was fourteen years old. By that time, she was much more of a chauffeur than a nanny. I think you have to build your own kind of support network in order to be able to manage that kind of work.

Ghaffari: After about eight years, you moved into what they call enterprise business transformation. How would you describe that?

Horan: This was a role working for the IBM CIO. One of the things that the CIO does is not just manage data centers and the technology, but at IBM, we actually call it business transformation and information technology. That role requires working with both operations and the business to understand what the corporate strategy is and how we will implement the IT systems and the business processes supported by the IT systems.

When I moved into that role, our corporate strategy was evolving quite a bit. IBM had divested itself of commodity products, such as the ThinkPads and PCs, in order to move forward. We acquired a lot more software companies. We'd bought PricewaterhouseCooper's Consulting, which took us into a whole new services business. There was a genuine need to make changes to our business processes to be able to support that new corporate strategy. So my role, first, was to help our senior executives understand our current limitations and why we needed to make a change. Then, having convinced them that we needed to do something different, they said, “Okay, that's great. Now, you go run the project to actually do that.”

When I came into that role, I thought I was going to do my eighteen-month tour through corporate that everybody in a large company has to do. Then I thought I'd just go back to a role in a business unit. I've been here five years, now, and I absolutely love it. It's great.

Ghaffari: Did you pursue the role of the CIO?

Horan: As a part of my enterprise business transformation role, we were deploying a re-implementation of SAP,³ which was our core ERP system. We'd been a customer of SAP for a long time, but we decided that a re-implementation and expansion of the SAP footprint would better support our corporate strategy. I was leading that project, which went live with our first rollout in China at the beginning of 2011. Right after that, Pat Toole, who was CIO at the time, was asked to become a general manager in IBM's Global Technology Services. With the success of the project rollout and my knowledge of what was happening within IBM's IT environment, the decision was made to offer me a promotion into the job of the CIO.

IBM does a very good job about career and succession planning. I had had discussions over the past five years with Linda Sanford, who is senior vice president for Enterprise Transformation at IBM and to whom I report now. She had asked me if the CIO role was something that would ever interest me, to which I answered, “yes.”

Ghaffari: Would you consider Linda Sanford a mentor?

Horan: Yes, very definitely. IBM is a very large, complex operation. I think having somebody who can help you understand the background, nuances, and how to navigate this kind of organization is very helpful. I'm somewhat unusual in that I'm not an IBM exec who spent my whole career here. Many executives have been at IBM their entire career and grew up knowing who's who and where the important opportunities are situated. So, having someone who can help with that navigation is invaluable.

Ghaffari: You've been on this job just a few months. How is it different from what you were doing before?

Horan: Let me try to answer that in a couple of ways. That one transformation program that I was running before—it was called Blue Harmony—was possibly one of the most complex and strategic projects that IBM has ever undertaken. I've spent the last three years focused on it—a very large and complex project. Every day, I'd get up and think, “What's happening with the Blue Harmony project today?” By design, I had a relatively small staff—about fifty people on my direct team out of a total project team of about fifteen hundred people in a very matrixed structure.

Now, in this new position, I still have responsibility for that project, but it's now one project in a very large portfolio. I have responsibility for a lot more things as well. I have full responsibility to make sure that all of IBM's IT systems are up and running. The scope of my responsibility is much, much broader. Today, I can have twelve different meetings on separate and individual projects. The content switching is really quite incredible.

My direct staff today comes to about five thousand people, so I'm now managing much larger teams and all of the processes that go along with that increase. About 60 percent of my staff is located in the US, with 40 percent located all around the world.

Ghaffari: Do you still do a lot of traveling?

Horan: That is accurate. Something else that's interesting about this job, and I imagine it's unique for a CIO, is that I spend about 30 percent of my time with IBM clients because we are in the business of IT. Many of our clients want to know if “we are eating our own cooking”—are we deploying the same technologies or new services inside IBM that we are selling to our clients. That produces a fair amount of travel.

Ghaffari: What would you say were the most significant turning points in your career, as you look back over all the changes?

Horan: Obviously, the decision to come to the US was very definitely a significant turning point. It began as a tentative decision. We said, “Maybe we'll go for two years and then see if we like it.” We never went back. That was a very big decision for me.

I think that had I stayed in the UK and wanted to have children, I probably would not have kept working because I don't think that was as socially acceptable in England at that time. The quality day care that would be needed just wasn't available there. So, that's one reason why that was a huge turning point for me.

Another big turning point was the decision to stay at IBM. For most of my career, I had worked for about four years and then moved on. At the time I was having my children, I stayed at the firm for eight years. When I came to IBM, I fully expected that I'd be here for about four years and then would move on. But once I got to know the company, I realized that you could do a variety of interesting things all within the context of this one large company without having to leave for somewhere else. I think that was probably another really big turning point for me.

Ghaffari: Anything keep you up at night? Was there anything that might have persuaded you to think of quitting? What kept you going during some of those tough times?

Horan: I will say that working full-time in a demanding career with two toddlers is not easy. There definitely was a period there when I seriously thought about working part-time or even quitting for a while. Definitely, the toddler years were the toughest just because of the physical demands from them. But, then I got a promotion, so I said, “Well, maybe it's not the right time.” I figured out how to plow through that challenge. Then, as the girls got a little older, they became more self-sufficient.

The other challenging time was at Digital, but that was a different type—it was corporate tumult. It was a tough time because I really didn't know where I was going or how I fit in. I've never been one to say, “Look. I'm just here for a paycheck.” My job really has to have content, something that gets me up and excited in the morning. When Digital finally decided they were going to do something with the AltaVista business and the internet, then I was able to settle down and find another little niche for myself there. That was another tough period.

Ghaffari: You've mentioned quite a few very positive, collegial relationships at IBM. Do you see IBM as a place that helps women like yourself, with families, advance their career?

Horan: Yes, I definitely think that is the case. IBM provides a variety of benefits to women, including work-from-home options, benefits relating to access to resources and help with finding day care–type things. The environment and culture of the company is very respectful of the individual. They understand that managing your work and your life are important and that if you're not happy in your home life, you probably will not be as productive as an employee. So the culture is very supportive from that perspective.

Also, I believe the company has definitely made a push for diversity groups in general—not just women, but other minorities as well. In the company's career and succession planning, I see a definite focus on ensuring that, when there are executive position openings, a diverse slate of candidates is presented. People truly are being given the opportunity to compete for leadership positions. I think that's definitely a positive part of the IBM culture.

Ghaffari: How did you come to be a director at MicroVision?

Horan: I was in San Jose, California, in 2006 when I got a call from some people I knew in Boston. They told me, “There's a small company that's looking for some new directors. They want to gain some diversity on their board, and they're looking for somebody in technology. Are you interested in meeting with them?”

At that time, a board seat wasn't really on my radar, but I was intrigued by the idea as well as the technology space of the company. MicroVision produces technology for “pico projectors,”⁴ which envisions embedding a projector within a cell phone or another mobile device, so that you could project content onto a wall or a flat screen to share with colleagues rather than everybody trying to crowd around little two- or three-inch screens. It's a great company and a great vision. Obviously, I had to get permission from IBM, which included proving the company was not competitive with IBM, and also from my direct manager to concur that I could dedicate the time to do this.

I think this is another example of the IBM culture at work, because they see this experience as one that will help broaden my perspective. Furthermore, the experiences I gain in this board position ultimately will help me function in my current business position, as well as understand the broader business world better.

Ghaffari: Who referred you from Boston?

Horan: It was The Boston Club—a women's networking group in Boston. I had belonged to it when I lived there. Part of their mission is to try to help place women on boards. When MicroVision came to them looking for a search candidate, they remembered me and thought I fit the profile. MicroVision is in Seattle.

Ghaffari: Were there any big surprises or mistakes that you remember?

Horan: I suppose a big surprise was when I moved from a company where, literally, everyone's in the same building, to another company where you're now part of a global organization and half the people have never met the other half. IBM and Digital were both sponsors of the Open Software Foundation, and I always used to laugh when people from IBM would show up at a meeting and that would be the first time they had met each other. Once I got here, I realized that was the norm at IBM because there are four hundred thousand of us, so how can you possibly know all of them? The big surprise was that you had to figure out how to work in a large company and navigate your way around—learn the importance of building a network within the organization.

Mistakes, I don't know. I could say that my experience of being at Digital was simply the wrong time to make the decision to go there. In hindsight, I might not have made that move. But on the other hand, that experience was something that I was able to leverage into joining IBM, so I can't really regret it that much.

Ghaffari: How would you describe you own decision-making style?

Horan: I am definitely a very analytical person, which comes from my math background. I like to understand enough of the details to get myself comfortable. I do think that I am collaborative in the sense that I listen to other people's opinions, but I am not afraid of making tough decisions. I will weigh the facts and then make the decision.

Ghaffari: Where do you see yourself over the next five to ten years?

Horan: One of the things I've come to appreciate about being on the board of MicroVision is a thought that in retirement I could potentially be on two or three company boards. I think that that would be a fun thing to do and would keep the brain cells working.

Another thought would be to pursue more opportunities to give back to the community. I've recently joined the board of a local nonprofit here in Connecticut. I'd like to be able to do work in that regard as well, while also taking some time to relax and travel—to visit some of those places that I've flown into and out of for corporate meetings but never actually stayed and visited.

Ghaffari: What's the nonprofit in Connecticut?

Horan: It's an organization called Jane Doe No More. Their mission is around raising awareness of the trauma that victims of sexual assault go through and helping them through that trauma, removing the stigma of being a victim.

Ghaffari: When you talk to your family about changing the ball game and moving into a new career, how have they responded to those goals and vision and your business interests?

Horan: My family back in England had little knowledge of what I do. My role is something outside of my parents' sphere of experience. But, they are proud of me when I'm excited about changing roles. My brother, though, works in a similar field, so he has a better understanding.

From my daughters' perspectives, it took them until they went away to college to realize the significance of my work. You're always “just Mom” to your daughters. But, as they started to talk with other people about careers and to their professors about careers, they began to be more aware of what their parents do. At that point, I think they developed a much better understanding of my work.

Ghaffari: As you look at young professional women today, what kind of advice do you have for them?

Horan: Everybody's situation, obviously, is unique. But the thing I always try to advise people is don't focus yourself totally on some career goal or career path and have that be a maniacal focus because you might miss some interesting opportunities.

I look at my decisions: what if I had not come to the United States, or if I had not moved to Massachusetts, or if I hadn't come to IBM, or if I hadn't moved to the CIO office? All those things were not necessarily part of a natural, logical progression, but altogether they represent a whole lot of opportunities.

I think one of the most important things is to keep your options open, to evaluate each opportunity as it comes along, and to listen to input that comes your way.

Ghaffari: Do you do speaking events for young professional women?

Horan: I have given presentations at different times and on different topics. Next month, I've been invited to speak at the Women's International Networking Conference in Rome, Italy. It's an event about careers and opportunities. I certainly have done a lot of that.

We have a number of diversity networks at IBM. Periodically I've been asked to speak to a group about my career, the decisions I've made, and why I've made them.

Ghaffari: We say a lot about this concept of being open to opportunities. How do you balance simply responding to random serendipity vs. a controlled selection of opportunities?

Horan: You have to think about the totality of your experiences and not put yourself in a box. One of the things that I try to say to people for whom I am a mentor is, “We all can do a lot of things, but what do you want to do? What makes you excited?”

I think that's what's truly important. Maybe an opportunity comes your way, or you hear about something, or maybe you're thinking, “I'm ready for a change. Let me do a scan of the horizon and see what's out there.” You have to evaluate each situation at that point in time. It's never just a work decision—it's a life decision. You have to figure out where you are with respect to children and family. If it's a job that will have a lot of travel, can you handle that? Once you put the opportunity into your own perspective, maybe it will be the right time for that job or maybe it won't. But, you know you will have weighed it all—considered everything. That's what matters.

Ghaffari: Do you give the same type of advice to men as you give to women?

Horan: I do.

Ghaffari: Where do you think is the area of greatest opportunity for careers for, especially for women at this point?

Horan: I really do think that women can choose to do anything they want to do these days. Sure, the glass ceiling does still exist in some industries, but I don't think that should necessarily stop you if that's something you have a passion for. When I look around a company like IBM or any of the many companies that I do business with, there are women in senior leadership positions in many industries these days. I've actually been quite pleasantly surprised by the number of women CIOs that I've met in just the last four months. Technology—a field that traditionally has been considered something of a male domain—is now wide open. These days, I don't see any barriers to women. If you've got the basic technology background and an interest in the business, you can do it.

Ghaffari: Do you consider yourself a leader?

Horan: I do. I see that my role here is to paint the vision, for the organization, of where we need to go to be able support the business and to make sure that I have the best people in the roles to actually deliver on that vision. My role is to help the organization understand how what we do contributes to the corporate results and the corporate strategy. For me, it's all about making good decisions in the context of that business strategy.

Ghaffari: Do you see yourself stepping beyond the CIO role into a president/chairman role of a corporation?

Horan: I like being the IBM CIO—it's a fabulous job and a great job—but I think maybe I'd like to have a P&L role in one of our lines of business as well. I think that's something that would be fun to do.

I must admit that when I think about how I went from medical ultrasound and flight simulators to being a CIO, it's not a natural nor a straightforward journey, but it was a great trip, and a fun one, too. I look forward to some more of the same in the future.