Bob Lord is a global executive leader that has consistently applied strategic, operational, and financial acumen to reshape businesses, ranging in size from $.5B to $15B, resulting in increased shareholder value.
With a remarkable career spanning 30 years, Bob has been at the forefront of business transformation and at the intersection of marketing, Media and Technology. During his tenure as Senior Vice President of IBM (NYSE: IBM), Bob served as the company’s first Chief Digital Officer, revolutionizing the global consumption of IBM products and services. Serving as SVP of IBM’s Worldwide Ecosystem & Cognitive Applications, Bob redefined the go-to-market strategy by fostering an open ecosystem with developers, partners and buyers. Bob successfully divested core units to align with IBM’s business strategy and orchestrated the sale of The Weather Company to a private equity partner. His unique ability to convene powerful ecosystems has enabled collaboration among clients, business partners, and competitors to address the complex challenges facing both business and society.
In the last decade, Bob has been a driving force in advancing open standards within the ecosystem. His most ambitious initiative, Call for Code at IBM, brought together the software community from over 180 nations, engaging more than 600,000 developers, data scientists and students to address societal issues with cutting-edge solutions based on IBM technologies and innovations. Bob has a proven track record of delivering consistent profitable growth and business transformation in multibillion dollars enterprises. As President of AOL (NYSE:AOL), he steered the company’s evolution into a global advertising platform, ultimately transforming the $3 trillion digital media buying industry and selling AOL to Verizon (NYSE: VZ) in 2015. During his role as Global CEO of Razorfish (formerly NASDAQ: RAZF, AQNT, MSFT), Bob led the digital consultancy through a transformative journey, working with clients like Cisco, Condé Nast, Ford, Mercedes, State Farm and Pfizer. Razorfish was ultimately sold to the Publics Groupe (OTCMKTS: PUBGY), where Bob was promoted to run the Groupe’ Digital Interactive businesses.
Bob has served on the boards of William Sonoma (NYSE: WSM), various Blackstone portfolio companies (Finance of America (NYSE: FOA) and AquaFinance (EXIT) and Screenvision Media (screenvisionmedia.com). Actively engaged with industry associations, he recently served as the Executive Sponsor of IBM’s Black Community (DEI), demonstrating his commitment to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. Bob was named one of CRN’s 50 “Most Influential” channel chiefs in 2022 and one of Adweek’s Top 50 media, marketing and tech executives in 2017. Under his leadership, Razorfish earned a place on Advertising Age’s A-List for many years. He also co-authored a book “CONVERGE: Transforming Business at the Intersection of Marketing and Technology.”
Bob holds a BS in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from Syracuse University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Bob enjoys biking, golfing, and competing in triathlons, and most importantly, spending time with his family.