Gary Burnette

Gary retired from IBM in 2021 joining Kyndryl as its first Chief Data Officer and head of Enterprise Architecture. He is responsible for Kyndryl’s data assets, enabling business insight and digitizing key management systems. He had worked in IBM for over thirty years in a broad range of roles including software development, product management, product marketing, IT business/financial operations, IT transformation and data.

Most recently, he owned enterprise data governance and acted as a divisional CDO for three parts of the IBM business – Mergers and Acquisitions, Support Transformation and sales. His teams ensured data assets were cataloged, trusted, managed, protected and leveraged to produce insight strategies for effectiveness and efficiency.

Prior, he was vice president of Marketing, Sales and Software Commerce (effectively a divisional CIO for Global Sales and Marketing). Gary’s teams led the operations of all IT systems in support of these business areas globally and were tasked with the creation of new capabilities to support new business models, digital transformation and new ways of working. This includes enablement of IBM’s digital channel.

Before that, he was vice president, Operations and Strategy in IBM’s sales organization leading process design work; development of IT strategies in response to business change and operations of the management system, I/T systems, telephony and infrastructure in support of sales. He previously led IT development teams in a variety of business areas such as CRM, pricing, product configuration, etc.

Prior to his IT executive roles, Gary held jobs in IBM’s Software division(s) as a developer and in various levels of development management. He led product management and marketing programs in IBM’s networking business.

Gary graduated from East Tennessee State University and has participated in executive education programs at George Washington (Project Management) and Penn State (ISC). He mentors a number of top talent professionals and co-chaired IBM’s Native Council focused on the hiring, development and advancement of American Indian professionals.

Gary lives in Raleigh with his wife. They have two grown sons, a couple of dogs and a cat or two most of which arrived while he was away on various business travel.