Going Deep with Ginni Rometty on Purpose

Kelly Corrigan Wonders

Kelly Corrigan Show

Society & Culture

4.8 • 3.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2023

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I loved being with Ginni Rometty. She is full of insight and clearly oriented toward world-positive work. I was also taken with her midwestern charm and candor. Emerging from a tricky childhood, she found herself running IBM in a time when very few women were commanding boardrooms (a statement that is maddeningly still applicable today). Now, she is entirely devoted to making good careers available to many more people, and her plan is working. This is a conversation for anyone who wants to build more purpose into life and perhaps one to forward along to the young professionals in your life as inspiration. Thanks to AmeriHealth Caritas and PBS for supporting this work. You can watch this conversation anytime at PBS.org/kelly.

Ginni Rometty’s book: Good Power: Leading Positive Change in our Lives, Work, and World

Feedback always welcome: [email protected]

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Kelly Corrigan Wonders.
0:10.0	I'm Kelly Corrigan and today I'm wondering about this thing an old friend once said to me that the first third of your life you learn the next third you earn and the last third you return.
0:20.0	I knew what he meant and learn earn return has a nice ring to it but I think it's a mistake to stop learning and definitely a mistake to wait on returning.
0:29.0	Then I met Ginny Rometi, who you know from the cover of Forbes in Fortune magazine she ran IBM learning and
0:36.2	earning and returning every day. We had a bang up conversation about her childhood, about her work at IBM, and her great
0:46.2	effort to return it all now. Join me for Kelly Corrigan Wonders and a
0:51.5	conversation with Ginny Rometi. Welcome back to Kelly Corrigan Wonders. I'm Kelly Corrigan. I find today's
1:18.3	guest irresistible. I kept wondering what mix of gumption, circumstance, and public policies slingshots, a poor
1:26.8	daughter of a teenage mom, into the boardroom of one of the most iconic companies in the world.
1:33.2	If you ask her, it's a story that has to do with neighbors, food stamps,
1:38.0	a scholarship, and taking the need for good power seriously. If you ask me how this fatherless girl became the
1:45.8	CEO of IBM, I say I think it's the stuff of dreams, perhaps uniquely American dreams.
1:53.4	Here is my conversation with Engineer, Mama Bear, and Fortune's number one most powerful woman
2:00.2	in the world three times over,
2:02.8	Ginny Rametti.
2:04.0	So your mom eloped at 17.
2:10.0	So your mom eloped at 17, had four kids, your dad left. You happen to overhear the conversation.
2:20.0	So I was 16 years old and I walked into the garage and I overheard my father talking to my mother. They did not see me standing there and I heard my
2:34.7	dad say to my mom, I don't care what happens to you. In fact, I don't care what happens to any of you.
2:41.9	And the garage door was open and I remember him turning around
2:46.0	and walking out and getting in the car and driving away. And somehow after she
2:52.4	caught her breath, shall we say, she found herself a way to get employed, just a high school graduate, four little kids.
	...

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