Jamila Gordon

Jamila is a global technology executive with over 20 years’ experience, including as Qantas Airway’s Chief Information Officer and implementing some of IBM’s largest engagements around the world. She was included on the BBC’s ‘100 Women’ list for 2021, highlighting women who are leading the way to ‘reinvent our society, our culture and our world’.

After starting life in a tiny village in the backblocks of Somalia, she found herself as a displaced person in Kenya, on her own and practically homeless due to the Somali civil war. Thanks to the kindness of a backpacker, she came to her new home Australia, where she learned English, got into university and fell in love with software engineering.

Her corporate career included Deloitte and IBM Europe, including running some of IBM’s largest global (US$1B+) megadeals for Solectron Manufacturing, AXA Insurance and ABN AMRO Bank, based out of Nice, Paris and Amsterdam. Qantas Airways brought her back to Australia as the Group Chief Information Officer, and she then went on to be Group CIO of CIMIC, the largest construction and contract mining company in the Southern Hemisphere, before she eventually Founded Lumachain.

Awards

• 2021 Women in AI Awards Innovator of the Year, ANZ
• 2020 New South Wales Tech Entrepreneur of the Year
• 2018 Microsoft’s Global Awardee in the International Women’s Entrepreneurship Challenge

In addition to Lumachain, Jamila sat on the Advisory Board of Questacon, Australia’s National Science Centre. She resigned in September 2022, due to her relocating to the US.

Jamila Gordon talks about:

• The power of dreams and having the courage to pursue them – Jamila’s personal goals have constantly expanded and grown. As a young girl, her dream was simply to avoid being married off at the age of thirteen, as most of her cousins had been. In Kenya, her dream was simply to survive. Today she is living her greatest dream yet: steering the rapid growth and global expansion of a best-in-class publicly-listed tech & digital businesses as well as unlisted start-ups.
• Leading effectively through challenge and complexity – Jamila has built her career on her capacity to bring diverse groups together and drive transformational change, at scale. She shares the leadership principles that have served her well.
• The role of resilience and positivity – Jamila’s has faced major challenges throughout her life, yet she has always found that the greatest adversity also brings the seed of opportunity. It is the developable capacity to bounce back and remain positive that is crucial to success.