Béatrice Kosowski, the face of IBM France

“Nicole, thank you! When Béatrice Koswoski looks back on the career path that led her to the head ofIBM France, it is not to a charismatic superior or an accomplice colleague that she pays homage first. But to the nanny who supported her for fifteen years to raise her two daughters. “Without her, I would never have made it,” insists the manager, who staunchly defends gender equality in her company.

Because he needed this support to lead his career at high speed in the ranks of the American group, in a sector that is not easy. Committed to the quantum battle, Big Blue has just entered into a partnership with Crédit Mutuel in this area. While wanting to tame artificial intelligence. And from Armonk, near New York, the group this week bought the software publisher Apptio, a specialist in cost control in the cloud, for 4.6 billion dollars.

Thirty years of presence

Béatrice Kosowski is celebrating her 30th birthday at IBM this year. She might as well have been an independent entrepreneur. At 20, she hadn’t yet thrown her Essec graduate mortarboard into the air when she created her own telephone marketing company: Anatel. “I finally gave it up after six years, because I didn’t know how to surround myself well,” laments the manager, who had nevertheless managed to attract clients such as Bureau Veritas, Air France, L’Oréal and… IBM. . This entrepreneurial spirit comes from a family education where studies and independence are two sacred and inseparable words.

Daughter of an expert French Petroleum Institute , and a hyperactive housewife, Béatrice Kosowski grew up in Rueil-Malmaison. She defines herself as “privileged” to have lived a happy childhood, shared between tennis (which she practiced at a high level), skiing and daredevil sessions of mountain biking in the mountains with her friends.

Failure and opportunity

But the counterpart of the privilege was to have a sense of hard work in mind. After having experienced the liquidation of her box badly, she got up with the help of the leader of Esthederm company . He hired her by convincing her that her failure was a great opportunity to bounce back. Three years later, she joined IBM: the IT group wanted her to develop a telephone marketing activity…

Béatrice Kosowski quickly climbed the ladder. Following her husband to Toulouse, where she lived for twenty years, she held the position of Europe, Middle East and Africa manager of the SME division. She then lived on the plane, between the pink city and the European capitals. “Managing family life involved phenomenal logistics,” she recalls. He needed a physical form of hell! Fortunately, working from home was a long-established practice at IBM. »

“A crazy energy”

Christophe Desachy, the vice-president of IBM technology who has worked with her for twenty years, observes “a leader who deploys a crazy energy, perhaps sometimes to the detriment of herself. She has exceptional leadership. She knows very well how to manage her emotions and those of others.

Member of the steering committee of Numeum (formerly Syntec Numerical) Béatrice Kosowski took over as head of IBM France in October 2020. On her desk at the Bois-Colombes headquarters, a greeting card calls out. It is illustrated with a woman’s head on an aquatic background: “At 40, I took up painting again, which I had abandoned at 20, for lack of inspiration, confides the artist. She came back ! Today, my guiding threads are faces and women. “A subject that does not work only behind his brushes. Béatrice Kososwki regrets that according to the Institut Montaigne, less than 20% of digital positions are held by women. “But at IBM, 46% of the comex is made up of it,” she boasts, as a faithful defender of the group.