Girish Varma

Girish Varma is a Managing Partner,Technology at RIDGE-LANE Limited Partners, a strategic advisory & venture development firm (http://www.Ridge-Lane.com).

He has over 35 years of experience as senior business & technology leader at fortune 150 companies (AT&T, IBM, CenturyLink, Qwest) & at Bell Laboratories, and led several successful business transformations $ turnarounds. Girish is also a founding LP/Advisor at the CXO Fund, focused on early stage investments, and founded the Technology Innovations Group, providing advisory services/investments in emerging areas including AI, IoT, advanced security, & cloud .

At Centurylink Girish was President of Global IT/Managed Svcs & New Market Development, where he created and led the business unit for new products including consulting & managed services such as digital transformation, IOT, public & private cloud, Security, AI, Big Data.

Previously, as Executive Vice President & CIO, he was responsible for driving the technology initiatives for business transformation. In this role, he also led the organization in integrations of large Qwest and Savvis acquisitions.

Prior to, Girish as the CIO at Qwest led the organization in enabling its major business turnaround to share growth and profitability. Earlier he was at IBM where he served as the VP of Global Applications Svcs and also built the Telecom Center, focused on creating new business & products for the telecom industry.

Prior to IBM, Girish was a senior VP & officer at AT&T, where he had a very successful 25-year career spanning AT&T & Bell Laboratories. At AT&T, he had the CIO responsibilities for business, network and local services. His technology career started at Bell Labs, where he held a number of technical & management positions including a vice president.

Girish holds a Masters Degree from Banaras Hindu University in India and a PhD from the City University of New York. He is also a recipient of numerous business achievement and software excellence awards & served on several boards/councils.