After serving a stint as the top economic advisor to President Donald Trump, Gary Cohn was named as vice chairman of IBM on Tuesday. Cohn is also a member of IBM's executive leadership team.
IBM said Cohn would work with CEO Arvind Krishna and the executive leadership team on a range of business initiatives in areas such as business development, client services, public advocacy and client relationship management.
Ever since he became IBM's CEO in April of last year, Krishna has been working towards making IBM a prime-time player in the hybrid cloud space. While Cohn doesn't appear to have in-depth knowledge about hybrid cloud, he brings his financial and economic acumen to Big Blue's leadership team.
When IBM announced in October it was cleaving the 109-year company into two separate companies in order to better serve the hybrid cloud sector, Big Blue said it saw hybrid cloud as a $1 trillion market opportunity.
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"I am honored to be joining IBM, one of the world's most important companies, providing technology that helps organizations be agile and resilient in unpredictable times," Cohn said in a statement. "With the company's long history of innovation and transformation for every technology era, and a focused growth strategy that will capitalize on the enormous opportunity in hybrid cloud and AI, this is an exciting time to begin working alongside Arvind, the IBM team and IBM's incredible roster of clients."
As the director of the National Economic Council, Cohn served as Trump's economic adviser from January 2017 until April 2018. Prior to that role, he was president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs Group for a decade. Cohn was with Goldman Sachs for a total of 26 years.
Cohn was in the White House when President Trump's tax cut package was enacted in 2017, but he later left after having a falling out with the president.
After returning to the private sector, Cohn entered the venture capital space by partnering with Cliff Robbins to form Cohn Robbins Holding Corp. Cohn, who is co-chairman of Cohn Robbins Holding Corp, said in a Tweet that he would continue working with Robbins and Cohn Robbins Holding.