Dr Caroline Kovac, General Manager of IBM Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences


As General Manager, Caroline Kovac is responsible for the strategic direction of IBM’s global pharmaceutical and life sciences business. She leads her team in developing the latest information technology solutions and services, establishing partnerships and overseeing IBM investment within the healthcare, pharmaceutical and life sciences markets. In this role, Dr Kovac works closely with a wide variety of leaders in healthcare and life sciences including medical centers and academic institutions as well as leading biotech and pharmaceutical companies to pioneer information-based medicine.

Before assuming her current position in 2004, Dr Kovac was general manager, IBM Life Sciences. Starting with only two employees as an emerging business unit in the year 2000, Dr Kovac successfully grew the life sciences business unit into a multi-billion dollar business, and one of IBM’s most successful ventures to date with more than 1500 employees worldwide. In more than 20 years at IBM, Dr Kovac has held a number of executive management positions, including vice president of Technical Strategy and Division Operations, and vice president of Services and Solutions. In the latter role, she was instrumental in launching the Computational Biology Center at IBM Research.