Carla Grant Pickens

Global Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, IBM

Carla has worked in Business/IT for approximately 28 years as a Manager or Executive in Consulting and Human Resources at IBM, Oracle, and Northrup Grumman corporations over the course of her career. For the past 20 years, she has worked for IBM primarily in the IBM Services unit in HR Leadership, Talent Strategy and Programs, and Executive Succession & Development. Today, Carla is the Global Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer for IBM, working to align IBMs diversity and inclusion goals with business outcomes, and respond to changes within society that affect our organization’s culture and our employees. Prior to this role she was the Vice President, for Global Business Services (GBS) Executive Succession & Development and Partner Development for 1,800 Executives and 3,300 executive pipeline employees for IBM Services globally.

Carla grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland where she attained a B.S. in Economics and M.S. in Human Resources. She holds an IBM patent for Workforce Retention and Compensation Analytics as an IBM inventor. Carla is eminent in the US and in the Asean region as a speaker at business events, academe and government on HR business transformation. She is the Executive Champion for the African-American DC-MD-VA (DMV) Business Resource Group, and Mentor/Executive Champion for Carver High School PTech Program, Baltimore Maryland.

Prior to IBM, Carla held roles in Consulting, Systems, and HR for PeopleSoft Inc/Oracle and Northrup Grumman. Carla is married to Eric Pickens, Sr. and has 2 sons: Eric, Jr. and Louis.

Todd M. Scott

General Manager, Global Technology Services, U.S. Communications Market, IBM

Todd was recently appointed as GM of the Global Technology business for the Communications Sector. In this role, Todd will manage the current portfolio of clients and develop value propositions for new ones. Helping them accelerate their transformations to the cloud or application modernization by providing world class infrastructure services.

Prior to his current role, Todd had the responsibility of managing the global Blockchain based supply chain solutions for IBM. The solutions included, most notably, TradeLens which is IBMs jointly developed solution with Maersk.

Todd was the IBM VP, Managing Director for PepsiCo (7 years) and Southwest Airlines (2 years) accounts.

In addition to the aforementioned roles Todd has also held numerous executive leadership responsibilities in IBM’s Global Markets and Systems organizations.
Todd’s present role caps a 32-year IBM career that began when he was recruited to IBM in July of 1988 after a brief and successful career in consumer banking for Wells Fargo.

Moderator

Lisa Blau

Partner at _able

Lisa Blau is a General Partner and co-founder of able Partners, a venture capital firm focused on early stage companies in the positive living space. With over 40 companies in the portfolio, and more than 75% with female founders, able’s investments include Daily Harvest, Spring Health, Goop and Bulletproof. Lisa has spent the last decade as an active angel investor with a particular interest in supporting women-led entrepreneurial ventures. She is a Board Member of The New York Public Library, KIPP New York, and The Mount Sinai Parenting Center. She chairs the Investor Group of the Leadership Now Project, an organization committed to renewing democracy. Lisa has a BA from Duke and an MBA from Harvard Business School and lives in New York City with her husband and three children.