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Nick Donofrio is a 44-year IBM veteran who led IBM's technology and innovation strategies from 1997 until his retirement in October 2008. He also was vice chairman of the IBM International Foundation and chairman of the Board of Governors for the IBM Academy of Technology.

Donofrio's most recent responsibilities included IBM Research, Governmental Programs, Technical Support & Quality, Corporate Community Relations, as well as Environmental Health & Product Safety. Also reporting to Donofrio were the senior executives responsible for IBM's enterprise on demand transformation. In addition to that strategic business mission, Donofrio led the development and retention of IBM's technical population and enriched that community with a diversity of culture and thought. In 2008 IBM Chairman Sam Palmisano elected Donofrio IBM Fellow, the company's highest technical honor.

Donofrio joined IBM as a college co-op student in 1964 and worked on the memory technology for the legendary IBM System/360 mainframe computing system. After being hired full time at IBM in 1967, he spent the early part of his career in integrated circuit and chip development as a designer of logic and memory chips. He held numerous technical management positions and, later, executive positions in several of IBM's product divisions. He has led many of IBM's major development and manufacturing teams from semiconductor and storage technologies, to microprocessors and personal computers, to IBM's entire family of servers.

Rick Donofrio earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1967 and a Master of Science in the same discipline from Syracuse University in 1971.