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 the society, the culture and the 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.