James J. Kavanaugh

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Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Finance & Operations 

James J. Kavanaugh is IBM’s Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of Finance & Operations.

Jim operates at the epicenter of IBM, ensuring all parts of the organization come together to deliver on an ambitious mission: be the catalyst that makes the world work better. He connects strategy to execution, insight to action, and technology to value.

Jim is a key architect of IBM’s AI, hybrid cloud, and quantum computing strategy and IBM's integrated value thesis – ensuring Software, Infrastructure, Consulting, and Research create enterprise value. He helped orchestrate the $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat that underpins this focus.

As SVP of Finance & Operations, Jim has pioneered leadership at the nexus of the two disciplines. He aligns strategic vision, fiduciary responsibility, and portfolio optimization with the core technology and operations necessary to run a global enterprise.

Jim is responsible for upholding IBM’s most enduring principle: continuous reinvention. He drives IBM’s AI transformation, which has created $4.5 billion in productivity gains and a powerful flywheel for investment and growth. IBM’s client zero AI use cases have been adopted by more than 1,500 clients around the world.

Jim believes transformation is about talent, not just technology. He views the IBMer as IBM’s competitive advantage, and helps build IBM’s workforce of the future: IBMers who blend technical expertise, deep domain skills, and principled leadership. Jim is also a fierce advocate of innovation for the common good. He spearheaded the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab and represented IBM in the Rome Call for AI Ethics.

Jim began his career at NCR in Dayton, Ohio, the same city where one of IBM’s predecessors, the Computing Scale Company, was founded. An IBMer for more than 30 years, he was the company’s first-ever SVP of Transformation & Operations. Prior, he was IBM’s longest-tenured Controller and youngest-ever officer. Jim joined IBM in 1996 from AT&T, where he was Chief Financial Officer of Americas Global Services.

Jim sits on the T-Mobile US Board of Directors. He is a graduate of the Ohio State University (Master of Business Administration) and University of Dayton (Bachelor of Science). He and his wife have five children.