Lauren States

Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow, Harvard University

Making Business Drive IT Transformation Through Enterprise Architecture (Cloud)

As Vice President, Technology Strategy, Growth Initiatives and CTO for Cloud Computing on the IBM Corporate Strategy team, Lauren is responsible for the technology strategy for IBM's growth initiatives, including cloud computing, Smarter Planet, business analytics and emerging markets. In her previous role in the IBM Software Group, Lauren engaged directly with clients to deliver leading edge cloud solutions globally. She joined IBM as a systems engineer after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School.

Lauren was a leader in the company's client/server emerging business, led the client/server Midwest sales team and has also served as global technical sales and customer deployment executive for IBM Software Group. As a senior executive on IBM's Integration and Values Leadership Team, she was a leader in the company-wide Client Value Initiative - responsible for the reshaping of IBM's skills development.

In 2012, Lauren received the Federal 100 Award and was recognized by CloudNOW as one of the Top Women in Cloud.