David Kenny is an American businessman and the former

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

Nielsen Holdings Nielsen Holdings plc (or Nielsen) is an American media audience measurement firm. Nielsen operates in over 100 countries and employs approximately 15,000 people worldwide. For most of its history, the company was known for its two subsidiarie ...

. He was formerly the CEO of

The Weather Company The Weather Company LLC is a weather forecasting and information technology company that owns and operates weather.com (the website for The Weather Channel), and Weather Underground. From 2016 to 2023, The Weather Company was a subsidiary of the ...

and senior vice president of

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

's Watson &

Cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles, suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may ...

platform.

Early life and education

Kenny was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1961. He earned a bachelor's degree from Kettering University (then the General Motors Institute) in 1984 and an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA) is a professional degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration; elective courses may allow further study in a particular a ...

from

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate school, graduate business school of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university. Located in Allston, Massachusetts, HBS owns Harvard Business Publishing, which p ...

in 1986.

Career

Kenny worked as a consultant at

Bain & Company Bain & Company is an American management consulting company headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. The firm provides advice to public, private, and nonprofit organizations. One of the Big Three (management consultancies), Big Three management co ...

between 1987 and 1997. In 1997 he became the CEO of Digitas, leading the company through an initial public offering in 2000 and its acquisition by

Publicis Groupe Publicis Groupe S.A. is a French multinational advertising and public relations company. As of 2024, the company is the largest advertising company in the world by revenue. Based in Paris, it is one of the 'Big Four' advertising commpanies, al ...

in 2007. He was the president of

Akamai Technologies Akamai Technologies, Inc. is an American company specialized in content delivery networkJ. Dilley, B. Maggs, J. Parikh, H. Prokop, R. Sitaraman, and B. Weihl. (CDN), cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, and cloud services. It is headquartered in ...

and resigned from this position on October 26, 2011. In January 2012, Kenny replaced Mike Kelly as CEO of

and served as

chairman The chair, also chairman, chairwoman, or chairperson, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the gro ...

of the board. When The Weather Company was acquired by IBM in 2016, Kenny became the senior Vice President of

's Watson &

platform. Kenny joined Nielsen as CEO in December 2018. In September 2023, he was succeeded by Karthik Rao and assumed the role of executive chairman.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kenny, David Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Directors of Yahoo! American chief executives in the mass media industry American chairpersons of corporations Publicis Groupe The Weather Channel people Kettering University alumni Harvard Business School alumni