Rice University Board of Trustees member James Whitehurst ’89 was recently named interim CEO and president of Unity, the world’s leading platform for creating and operating real-time 3D content, headquartered in San Francisco.
“Unity is a mission-driven company with the potential to change the world and I am thrilled to play a role in helping the company achieve that,” said Whitehurst, who joined Rice as a trustee in 2019.
Whitehurst previously served as senior adviser at IBM from July 2021 to May 2022 and president of IBM from April 2020 until July 2021. He joined IBM through the acquisition of Red Hat, a leading provider of open source enterprise information technology products and services, where he served as CEO from January 2008 until April 2020.
Prior to Red Hat, Whitehurst served in several leadership roles at Delta Air Lines, Inc. including as chief operating officer from 2005 to 2007, chief network and planning officer from 2004 to 2005, and senior vice president, finance treasury and business development from 2002 to 2004.
Before Delta, he held several corporate development leadership roles at The Boston Consulting Group, where he worked with clients across a wide range of industries.
Whitehurst currently serves on the board of directors of United Airlines and Amplitude, on the supervisory board of Software AG and as a special adviser at Silver Lake. He has previously served on the board of directors of Red Hat, SecureWorks Corp. and DigitalGlobe, Inc.
He received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Rice and an MBA from Harvard Business School.