The Executive From South Africa

Talent comes from many places. One particular executive talent comes from South Africa. She is Bridget van Kralingen. She earned a Bachelors of Commerce degree from the University of Witwatersrand and obtained a Masters of Commerce degree from the University of South Africa.

A trained psychologist she started her career as a researcher at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.  Bridget spent more than 20 years at Deloitte Consulting. She was the Managing Partner of the Financial Services Sector before she joined IBM in April 2004 as global Managing Partner of the Financial Services Sector.  She has led turnarounds in the global business services in northeast Europe.

After leading Global Services in Northeast Europe, Middle East and Africa, Bridget was promoted General Manager, IBM North America. This position involves being responsible for revenue, profit and client satisfaction for all of IBM’S business in the U.S. and Canada.

In January 2012, Bridget was named Senior Vice President, IBM Global Business Services. GBS has over 100,000 consultants and practitioners. She now heads IBM’S consulting, systems integration and application management services in over 170 countries.

Bridget is most certainly going places and we’ll surely hear more about her in the near future.