IBM has hired former Accenture Ventures senior principal Pramila Mullan as partner and director of ecosystems and ventures.
Pramila Mullan, a senior principal at Accenture Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of management consultancy Accenture, has left to join US-listed computing technology producer IBM.
Mullan, a Global Corporate Venturing Rising Stars 2019 award winner, has been taken on as a partner and director of ecosystems and ventures in IBM’s Global Business Services (GBS) division.
She said: “The last five years, I have had the incredible honour of helping grow Accenture Ventures. It has been a privilege to be a member of the Silicon Valley and VC ecosystem and to serve our portfolio companies. Now, I will be doing the same in a new role [at IBM.]”
GBS’s new ventures approach under Mullan will complement the existing IBM Ventures team under Angie Grimm. Mullan added: “IBM, a foundational technology and services leader, has been at the centre of innovation for decades in hardware, software, databases, middleware and, most recently, cloud [artificial intelligence] and quantum computing.
“Through up and down economic cycles, strategic pivots and technology shifts, IBM has consistently invested in and driven value for the ecosystem. In close collaboration with IBM Ventures, IBM Services will continue to do this by having a relentless focus on delivering value for our ecosystem of portfolio companies.
“IBM is at the epicentre of an amazing community of entrepreneurs driving new technologies forward – from AI, hybrid cloud, intelligent automation, quantum computing and beyond.”
Before joining Accenture Ventures, Mullan was a senior principal at Accenture Labs, and her former boss, Mike Redding, then-head of Accenture Ventures, said for her Rising Stars profile last year: “Pramila has a passion to learn, grow and execute.
“She has evolved from supporting transactions to setting Accenture’s corporate investment and partnership agenda in such fundamentally strategic domains as China and artificial intelligence. Her collaborative style has been essential in engaging the most senior business executives at Accenture and gaining their buy-in as a truly trusted adviser and strategist.”
Redding left Accenture Ventures in July after serial entrepreneur Tom Lounibos was promoted to global managing director of Accenture Ventures earlier this year, and as the unit hired Jake Kaldenbaugh to run its strategic minority investing (corporate venture capital) programme. Accenture Ventures is now understood to be looking to invest at an earlier stage.
