Ginni Rometty

Virginia “Ginni” Rometty (born 1957) spent nearly four decades at IBM, becoming its first female chair and CEO in 2012. Her tenure (2012–2020) was defined by an early, expensive, and often bruising bet that cognitive computing — branded as Watson after its 2011 Jeopardy! victory — would be IBM’s future.

The Watson years and “new collar” jobs

Rometty poured billions into Watson, most visibly in health care, where the promise of AI-assisted oncology outran the results and Watson Health was eventually sold off after her departure. Yet her workforce arguments proved durable. At CES in January 2019 she argued AI would change all work while creating more jobs than it destroyed, and that April told CNBC’s At Work conference: “I expect AI to change 100 percent of jobs within the next five to 10 years.” She coined “new collar” jobs for skilled technology roles that need no four-year degree, backing the idea with IBM’s P-TECH schools and apprenticeship programs.

Since leaving IBM — where Arvind Krishna succeeded her — Rometty has kept preaching what her 2023 book Good Power calls positive change at scale: co-chairing OneTen, a coalition to hire Black Americans without degrees into family-sustaining careers, and urging companies to hire for skills over credentials as AI redraws job descriptions.