Rodney C. Adkins oversees 50,000 employees and is responsible for $18 billion in revenue as senior vice president and group executive for systems and technology at IBM, one of the world’s largest and most durable technology companies. Adkins, 52, also is one of the most powerful African-Americans in high tech.
Until Adkins succeeded his boss, Robert Moffat, after his arrest in relation to the 2009 Galleon insider trading case, most people had never heard of him. The IBM-lifer got the job on an interim basis, with the promotion made permanent less than two weeks later. Adkins is considered one of three candidates to succeed Chief Executive Samuel J. Palmisano, 60, when he retires.
Growing up in the Liberty City neighborhood of Miami, Adkins was 10 years old when the area erupted in riots during the 1968 Republican National Convention. After leaving his hometown to study physics at Rollins College near Orlando, he was one of 25 African-Americans among a student body of 1,200. He joined IBM upon graduation and has left the company only once, to complete a master’s degree in electrical engineering at Georgia Tech.
In his 30 years at IBM, Adkins has occupied 19 different positions spanning almost all aspects of the company’s various business areas including hardware, software, UNIX servers, PCs and mobile computing. The division he currently heads generated revenue of $4.7 billion in IBM’s second quarter, up 17% from the same period last year. Adkins’ group also helped develop the underlying server system for the Watson computer, which gained notoriety for beating human competitors on the Jeopardy! game show.
Read more about Mr. Adkins here.
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