By Ciara O’Brien
Publication Date: 2026-05-22 00:00:00
When James Kavanaugh comes up against difficulty in his life, he turns to some old family advice. “Never lose the ability to continuously learn. Life is about learning lessons.”
The IBM executive may be responsible for steering IBM’s AI strategy these days but becoming a finance executive at a tech giant wasn’t always his life plan. Born and raised in what he describes as “very lower middle class” south side of Chicago, Kavanaugh has had to adapt over the years.
His father, a fireman for 40 years, is the source of much of his outlook on life.
“He instilled what I think is the most important thing as a parent, and that is a core set of values,” he says. “He always believed we make our own life lessons and decisions.”
That was a philosophy that served Kavanaugh well. His first passion, sports, came to an early end when an injury cut short his college sports career and forced him to transfer from the University of Montana to the University of Dayton in Ohio, where…
