David i dont consider myself a journalist. And nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer, even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . David so, when you wake up in the morning, do you say, look at all that i have achieved, i am incredibly proud of what i have done . Or do you say, i have to deal everyday with critics and other things . Ginni what a way to start. [laughter] ginni ok. I dont think i had either of those thoughts on that first day. I think on that first day, i thought about, perhaps, what an honor it was and what a responsibility it is. People forget that ibm is 106yearsold. And so, you really do get that feeling of you wake up that morning, realizing you are a steward of something. So, a different feeling. David at some point when i was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, ibm was the dominant Technology Company in the world. And it just ginni still is, david. [laughter] david ok. All right. Do you think it has the same strength in the computer world that it had in the 1960s . Ginni to me, i would answer that ibm is great, but for a reason that you did not mention. I think the greatness of a Technology Company is if you can reinvent yourself over and over. And i say, we will watch and see, because it is one thing to reinvent yourself once, then twice, but to do it three or four or five times. This is a really Competitive Industry that we are in, and i think we do something unique. Because it is one thing to have technology. It is another thing to have the knowhow on how to use it. So i feel what has made us distinctive, while we have gone through all sorts of products, i think the one kind of silver thread is that we really do help change the way the world works, and i go back to the beginning in time, i mean, way back. Ibm started it wasnt ibm actually at the time with meat slicers, then it was clocks, tabulating, and it was an era of, as you know, the mainframe, the back office. Then, it reinvented itself again into software and services. And now, we reinvent ourselves again. To me, that art of reinvention and that dna is really what makes it unique. David lets talk about your background for a moment. You grew up in chicago. And you have Three Sisters . Ginni two sisters and a brother. David two sisters and a brother. Ok, three siblings. And at one point, your father left your mother, and your mother was not collegeeducated at the time, so how did she support four children . Ginni i continue to learn a lot from my mom. But i give my mom a lot of credit for all four of us. As david said, my mother had a high school degree, but then quickly had us, as children, right after that. I was in my early teens when my dad chose to leave. And, it was sudden. My mother found herself with four kids, no money, soon to be no home, soon to be no food. And, she did, as i said, i learned she was so intent on not letting other people define who she was. And we had to do some things for a short time. She had to go on food stamps. We had to get help. I mean, that is what entitlement programs in this country are for, in many ways. But she went back to school. I had to help. I was the oldest. She went back to school at night and learned a profession. In fact, she became the head of administration for the sleep clinic at rush presbyterian in chicago. But a lot of people and family, like, i think everyones, they , pitched in. My mom really taught us. I would say the lesson i learned is never let someone else define who you are. She was never going to let that situation define who she was. David you were the babysitter for the 3 ginni i was. I went to pta meetings, bugle lessons. David did you get paid anything for the babysitting . Ginni no, i did not get paid. I probably should go sum that up. David you had a scholarship to go to northwestern . Ginni i did. Actually im proud of my , brothers and sisters all. We always said my mom never complained or said much, but we all watched by what she did. They sometimes say i am the underachiever. My brothers and sisters have been incredibly successful, and that really is that work ethic my mom instilled in us. That is to me so when i went to northwestern and i did have a scholarship, because we all looked for ways to do that and put ourselves through school. David your mother is still alive. Does she call you and tell you how great youre doing, or does she say your other siblings are doing just as well . [laughter] ginni actually, she calls and talks about all things normal mothers talk about, right . David she does not ask about ibm . [laughter] ginni her biggest thing this is a funny story about my mom. This past easter, she was at my house, and i was having to leave in the middle of the day to get to the airport. My mom says, hey, before you leave, i have your annual report, and i have written you a little set of notes on it. I am like, great, im even going to get a report card for my mother on this annual report. Because the first thing, like a mom does is she looks at the , pictures. But my mom says, look, i loved this annual report. She goes, this annual report, i understand what ibm does. And it was 50 vignettes, 50 short little vignettes, about how the world and professions and industries have changed because of watson, ai, cloud computing, and how it will make life better. Right . My mom goes, this is now i understand. And she had comments about the look and the paper type and other things, so she gave me a report card. David did you give any of these comments to your colleagues back at ibm . Ginni sure. I gave them all. [laughter] i have a large retail shareholder base. David you graduated from northwestern. Although you had a scholarship from General Motors, you were not required to work at General Motors, but you felt you should . Ginni yeah. These are some schools and these were wonderful programs from the day and age. This was an effort to get women and minorities into businesses. And at that time, General Motors have a program which was they went to the best schools and said, if i can get you the deal was i will pay your tuition, room and board, and everything. And someone going to school themselves, a professor said to me, you ought to look at this program. In return, work there for the summers. Otherwise, no strings attached. I had a wonderful set of internships with them. When i graduated, i did feel a sense, a real sense of obligation to first go to gm. I had a lot of other offers, but to go to gm. I was a Computer Science with engineering degree. David were a lot of women taking those courses in those days at northwestern in those days . Ginni what do you think . David not that many . Ginni no. I was probably one of the only woman in many of those classes, even then. David you are at set you are at General Motors several years. You hear of an opportunity to go to a Company Called ibm. Ginni it wasnt, as sometimes people think, that you have some long thoughtout career plan. Im sorry to tell you i had been working at General Motors, and while i liked what i was doing, i really felt, because i liked technology, it was the idea of to be able to apply it to a lot of different industries. It was as simple as my husband said, hey, look, i have a friend and his dad works for ibm. Why dont you just call him . Actually, i think it was my husband who actually set the interview up, to be honest with you. David did he get a finders fee . Ginni i am still paying that finders fee. [laughter] so i went to the interview, and then i was hired. David what area where you initially . Ginni i started out as a systems engineer. I was a systems engineer. I worked in banking, insurance, and i had many experiences through my years. I remember i had gone into consulting, so i had learned a lot of things, and it was time to do another job. And the story i always tell is that i worked for a gentleman, a very good mentor, and he said to me, hey, i am getting a new job, and you are going to get my job. You have to go to an interview. You are one of the candidates. Go to this interview. So i thought, hmm. I go to the interview, and they tell me all about the job and i think, boy, in my mind, im not sure im ready for this yet. This is a big job. Just a little more time, and i would be ready. I said to him may i go home . , i would like to go home and talk it over. Give me overnight to think about it. I went home i get home, and my husband, he is sitting there, and as usual, i am talking, talking, and hes like mmhmm. Mmhmm. [laughter] and i tell him about this interview. I said, but i said i wanted to go home and sleep on it. He goes, do you think a man would have asked that question . I mean i can remember it like it , was yesterday. I said, no. I went in the next day, and, of course i took the job , immediately. And the man, who was my mentor, who suggested it to me, he goes, dont do that again. I said, i understand. It is what formed this basis for me that i think has guided my whole career, which is growth and comfort never coexist. And you have got to get really comfortable with being uncomfortable. It is when you learn the most. David when you started doing these things, did you begin to think there was the chance you could be the ceo . Do you think ibm, like many companies, were never going to make a woman a ceo . Ginni no, that never entered my mind, that ibm would make a choice based on gender. Never. For all my time there, it has always been the most Inclusive Company i have known. When you interview others, do you think they i never thought about that. You do great in your current job, it earns your right to your next job. David when you meet with the president or other president s, do you see that ceos are willing to say, mr. President , that is not a good idea, or let me give you my thought, it might be different . Ginni in my experience, people are respectfully honest and give their opinions. And so, just as if there are times, whether it is a president or a Prime Minister, where we agree, and there will be times we dont agree. David so lets talk about ibm for a moment. It is a hardware, software company, a consulting company. Where would you say it really is today . Ginni keep going. [laughter] when i say first off an enterprise company, right . We uniquely live at that intersection of tech and business. Then, as you said, we build, overtime, hardware. Then, we layered it with software. We build integrated onto that services. And now, we are becoming a cloud and a Cognitive Solutions company. There will be another sort of reinvention of ibm one day in the future again, but today, it is about that. And it is not about the technology. It is cloud. It is ai. It is the why. As i say to all my colleagues, and i feel we are the champions for business. The champions for business. I will tell you what i mean by that. Right now, if you ask me to pick one word what ibm is reinventing around, i would tell you it is the word data. There is gold in that data. To me, we are on the verge of companies being able to use all that. This, to me, is companies go on the offense now against startups, against disruption, you do it with that data. You will need new tools, and that is where ai comes in. David one of the tools is what you call watson. Watson is named after ginni our founder, thomas watson. David watson got some attention because of jeopardy. Ginni it is funny how many people still remember that. In fact, that was i really give us credit, if i might, for having, sort of, relit the world of ai. You asked what i did early in my career i was an ai specialist at one time. That would be a couple of decades ago. So it isnt like ai itself is brandnew. There are a number of things that make it different in this point in time. What we did back then it was 2011 with jeopardy we had been working on ai for a good five years before. This gets back to the idea if you are always moving to where you think there is value in tech, we believe there is value in this data, and you have to be prepared for this world to do it costeffectively, and more important, you would have to have technology that did not get programmed. That is the difference with what our that is what watson and ai is. You do not say, what watson is, if this, do that. Every device you have has been programmed if this, do that. Somebody has to tell it what to do. Your smart phone, you name it. Watson takes data of all kinds, understands, reasons, and learns over that data. And that will help you make better decisions. This is an interesting stat i think we are sharing. In the world, we think there is a market of 2 trillion for making Better Business decisions. And some of it is rooted in the plain, fundamental fact that when you and i make decisions you may be better at this, david. David not likely. Ginni one third are right, one third are not optimal, and one third are wrong. It transcends everything. David lets talk about the life of a ceo a large company. How much time are you on the road, traveling, now . Ginni probably 50 . David and customers, they are mostly interested in what . When you meet with them, you try to tell them why ibm is better than somebody else . Ginni no. Of course, always well, in some ways. I think many clients look at us as a bit of a mirror image. I mean, i hear this from them. They are like i remember they are like i remember years ago, they were saying to me, wow, this is a lot of change. I remember saying, be careful, this is coming to a theater near you. This idea i believe our transformation mirrors what every company is going through. You rebuild yourself around data and cloud. You are going to have to change how you do the work, and youre going to have to work on who the people are who do the work. David how do you measure your success as ceo . Is it share price . Is it earnings, earningspershare, Revenue Growth . Ginni what i am most focused on, the boards most focused on, is transforming ibm for this next era, this next cognitive era. The milepost we put out there is, as i said part of the portfolio is we build new products and services, which is now 42 of ibm, which is 34 billion. It had doubledigit growth. That is a very important set of new offerings that that team created. At the same time, there are other things we do for clients. David, i think people forget we run the banks of the world, the railroads of the world, the airlines of the world. It is 9 out of 10, 10 out of 10. And that is why i both mirror and help them transition to the future, run their current world, transition to the future, and become the future. And that is a really serious obligation. Some of that does not grow as fast as other pieces, and the youth grows fast, but we, if anything, is to help people transition from era to era. The measurement is as we build the new businesses and keep moving to higher value. That is our distinction. David does it bother you that you have more employees, more revenue, more customers all over the world then companies like, i assume, apple or amazon or facebook, but they have higher market capitalizations . Does that strike you as unfair in some ways . Ginni i always want to work on higher market capitalization. So, the unfair part i do not feel these things are, as you say, sort of a burden in that way. Because what we do is different. It is this combination of having technology and then knowhow, which means you have both of those things together. David every country you visit around the world, i assume, if you want to meet the Prime Minister or president , you would have no problem getting into do that . Ginni yeah, but you dont abuse that. There are important issues around the world. Almost every government we talk to about cybersecurity. Very important to talk about things around digital trade. The other one has been about workforce and skills. When you look at why there is division between people and why is there inequality, every time you will trace this back, and it will be about skills and opportunity. That is what we have been working on. David when you are meeting with the president or other president s, do you see that ceos are willing to say, mr. President , that is not a good idea, or let me give your my thought. It might be different than yours. Or are people kind of quiet whenever any resident p residents are around . Ginni my experience is that people are respectfully honest. They give their opinions. Just as there are times with every whether a president or a Prime Minister where we agree, and other times when we do not agree. In our case, here as an example with the paris agreement, we believe that america should stay in there. So we shared our viewpoints on that. The issues that are important, right, to our business and our clients. David do you feel a certain responsibility as a woman ceo to mentor other women and speak out on issues relating to women . Ginni you always want to be noticed and rewarded for what you did, your contribution. You know . I would always think, this has nothing to do with gender, almost blind to that. I really came to learn and see that how important it is that there be role models. And you have to accept that you are a role model on the appropriate things. David so do you think a woman who rose up to be the leader of ibm had to be better than the men, or do you think it really didnt make a difference . Ginni i do not think, in ibm, it made a difference. David people who are subordinate who come to you and you dont like their ideas, do you ever yell at them, scream at often do, or are you quiet about it and tell them their ideas are no good . How do you tell people youre not happy . Ginni i am not a screamer. Never was. David you dont throw things . Something like that . Ginni i dont think ive ever thrown anything. But i have always believed in the way to challenge things is to challenge them. It is the intellectual. I always feel, you need to know what you are talking about. So, to me, i have no trouble being the one to ask questions, and i think that is the best way to challenge things. David so do you feel a certain responsibility, as a woman ceo, to mentor other women and speak out on issues relating to women . Ginni this is an interesting question, david, because i have grown to be comfortable with that role, about being a role model. Because i think many of my say, and maybe it is a bit as we colleagues would all say, and maybe it is a bit as we came through our businesses, you always want to be noticed and rewarded for what you did, your contributions. I would always be, this has got nothing to do with gender, right . Almost blind to that. Over time, though, i really came to learn and see how important it is that there be role models. And you have to accept the fact that you are a role mode