Claudia Brind-Woody is currently the IBM Managing Director for the Kyndryl Partnership in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Most recently, she was the Managing Director for the Walgreens Boots Alliance Account where she led the IBM team in both Europe in North America. Prior to that role, she was the Vice President and Managing Director for IBM’s Global Intellectual Property Licensing where she delivered more than $3 Billion of profit to IBM through IP Partnerships. She also led the two large divestitures of IBM Software in 2019 – one of $1.77 Billion and the other of $545 Million. Claudia has been with IBM since 1996 and has held multiple global roles during her tenure including work in Finland and the United Kingdom.
Claudia is an accomplished speaker who has done keynote speeches on LGBT Diversity throughout the world. She has also contributed to the books: Out & Equal at Work: From Closet to Corner Office (2013) and The Glass Closet: Why Coming Out is Good for Business (2014). She is featured in the book Pride and Joy: LGBTQ Artists, Icons and Everyday Heroes (2017).
Claudia currently serves on the Advisory Board of WorkPlace Pride in Amsterdam and on the Toyota Motors Europe Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Board. In the past, she has also served on the Board of Directors of Out & Equal Workplace Advocates, the Board of Directors for Lambda Legal and the Advisory Board of The GayStar News. She served as the Co-Chair of the IBM LGBT+ Executive Taskforce for over 20 years, and now serves as Co-Chair Emeritus.
In 2011, Claudia received the Out & Equal Trailblazer Award. She was named to the Financial Times Global LGBT Role Models Hall of Fame in 2016 after having been in the top 10 on their list for the three previous years. She has been included in The Guardian’s WorldPride Power List Top 100 and the Diva Power List. In 2015, she was listed as #2 on the Telegraph Media Group’s “Out at Work LGBT Top 50 Executives.” She has been honored with the National LGBT Bar Association Out & Proud Corporate Counsel Award and with the Workplace Pride Global Ambassador Award. In 2019 she was listed as #4 on the Enterprise Management 360 “Top 10 LGBTQ+ People in Tech”, and in 2020 was shortlisted for the Women in IT Global Leader of the Year Award. In 2021, she was named to the Interesting Engineering list of “27 LGBTQ+ Scientists and Tech Leaders Shaping Our Future,” and to Channel Futures global “DE&I 101” list.
Before joining IBM in 1996, Claudia worked for the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, as an executive for CenturyLink, and as the Assistant Dean of the College & Graduate School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. She also served as the Assistant Athletics Director at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Tennessee. She was also an Assistant Basketball Coach under Pat Summitt at the University of Tennessee.
Claudia holds a J.D. degree, magna cum laude, from Georgia State University, an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin, and an M.S. from the University of Tennessee. She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Mary Baldwin College where she earned her B. A. summa cum laude. She was admitted to practice law by the State Bar of Georgia.