Global Chief Evangelist, IBM iX
Recognized by Advertising Age as one of the “100 Most Influential Women in Advertising History,” Nancy Kramer has spent a lifetime as an entrepreneur in marketing and technology.
Believing computers would change the world, Kramer launched Resource in 1981 with seed funding from her first client, Apple Computer, growing the company into a multi-office, 350-associate digital marketing pioneer. Her team’s iconic work includes many industry firsts, from creating Apple’s first interactive retail experience, to launching one of the internet’s first live streaming events for Victoria’s Secret which is memorialized in a time capsule at MIT to the first fully integrated social commerce experience, which received a U.S. patent. She created and produced two Superbowl commercials.
IBM acquired her business in 2016, the only female-owned business to have achieved the milestone. Today, as a Global Chief Evangelist, Kramer focuses on C-Suite client relationships as well as IBM’s cultural transformation.
Kramer serves on the Board of Directors of public-traded Root Insurance, and M/I Homes. She is Chairperson of The Columbus Foundation, Vice Chair of The Columbus Partnership, and a Trustee at The Wexner Center for the Arts. Kramer is an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ rights, having testified in front of a Congress in support of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Kramer is the founder of the FTT Foundation, which through the Free the Tampons campaign has launched a national discussion about access to feminine care products in public restrooms.
Kramer and her husband, fellow entrepreneur, Christopher Celeste, split their time between the home in Columbus and their blended family home in Martha’s Vineyard, surrounded by family, friends, and a barely obedient mastiff-lab mix dog named Oggie.