Katrina Troughton is the new managing director at IBM Australia and New Zealand (ANZ), replacing David La Rose, who moves into a global role.

Troughton is the first woman appointed as managing director of IBM ANZ, following an impressive 28-year career at the company in local, regional and global roles. She also spent more than four years as general manager for IBM New Zealand.

“There is an incredibly diverse and talented team at IBM ANZ, and I look forward to continuing the work done to date in leading business and cultural transformation at IBM,” Troughton says.

“I have a great sense of pride in taking on this role and continuing to build on the trust and confidence our clients have in IBM to help them drive innovation and digital reinvention,” she says.

Starting her career at IBM in New Zealand, Troughton has held leadership positions in ANZ and Asia Pacific for IBM's analytics, cloud and software businesses. Most recently, she was vice president for enterprise and commercial sales for Asia Pacific, where she revitalised the region's skills agenda and led a team to deliver strong growth in IBM's cloud, software and infrastructure business.

Troughton also previously held the global role as vice president for IBM's Smarter Workforce Solutions, where she worked to reform end-to-end offerings and the go-to-market strategy driving the transformation to SaaS and services solutions.

Meanwhile, La Rose has been promoted to the general manager role for the IBM Partner Ecosystem. He will be based in the United States and report to Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president and chairman for IBM Systems, North America.

With a history of leading growth in IBM's business partner and channel ecosystem across Asia Pacific and Europe, La Rose's new role builds on this experience to assume global responsibility for the company's business partner organisation.