Maria Azua Himmel joined Bank of America in February 2018 as Managing Director. She leads the Bank of America Enterprise Data Platforms and Application Services (EDPAS) organization reporting to the Corporate CTO with responsibilities over Enterprise Data Platforms, 52 middleware vendors, $240M in budget for software contracts, infrastructure and data centers dedicated to host the bank data. In addition, Data Governance and Data tools to ensure the best possible experience to the bank business units preforming transactions. Prior to this role Maria managed the data Cloud Strategy for the Chief Data Office (CDO) organization and was responsible for the automation of data platforms, CDO cloud migration strategy and services. Her leadership brings together numerous functions responsible for advancing Bank of America’s overall IT strategy to help accelerate data quality and adoption of the latest IT technologies to achieve the best possible customer satisfaction.

Prior Bank of America Maria Azua worked for Fidelity Investments as the leader for IT Infrastructure, Databases as a Service, Middleware, Analytics services and Cloud enablement. In her tenure with Fidelity she created an OpenStack cloud service as well as enabled Amazon AWS Cloud adoption transforming the company into a mainstream cloud user. Prior to Fidelity, Maria was Barclays Managing Director of Engineering where she created a private cloud and container services achieving significant automation.

Maria joined Barclays Bank at the firm’s headquarters in London in 2013 as Managing Director & Global Head of Infrastructure Engineering responsible for computer systems, network fabric, storage, mobile and voice solutions, BYOD, collaboration tools, data services, data enterprise management, data warehousing, Barclays private cloud, PaaS, SaaS, and banking batch automation solutions.

From 1990 to 2013 Maria was with IBM where she progressed through increasingly responsible engineering and director level assignments to officer roles in the CIO, CTO, and Global Process Services organizations. In 2010 Maria was appointed CIO of Global Process Services (GPS) and designed world class applications for Uniliver Inc. supply chain and Apple computer calling centers solutions. She led Latin America cloud technical support and played a key role in the region’s revenue growth from $100M to $2B. Also, she led the successful launch of several private cloud / outsourcing offerings.

Maria Azua Himmel is the author of The Social Factor – Innovate, Ignite, and Win Through Mass Collaboration and Social Networking, a book about social networking based on Maria’s pioneering leadership in social networking tools at IBM. Her contributions to social networking tools, B2B solutions and IT transformation automation are widely recognized throughout the IT community.

Maria has a Bachelor in Physics and Doctorate in Computing Science from Pace University. She has 51 patents and over 25+ year of experience on the IT industry, banking solutions, software development, data design, process optimization, IT security, and cloud technology. She has developed IT solutions for the largest banks in the world and is well recognized for her technical leadership in cloud and IT automation. Maria Azua Himmel was inducted into the Women In Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame, and was named one of the “100 Most Influential Hispanics” by People Magazine in 2006.

Maria lives in Jacksonville FL with her husband and her hobbies include traveling and painting. She also likes to exercise, volunteers to teach computing to high school kids, and is a member of the board of directors of the North Carolina Red Cross region which helps her to give back to the community.