David W. Kenny

Portrait
David W. Kenny, Executive Chairman, Nielsen

Director Since: September 2013


* Independent Committees:



  • Compensation Committee (Chair)

  • Nominating Committee


Other Public Company Directorships: None



Prior Roles:



  • Executive Chairman, Nielsen (2023- present)

  • CEO and board director, Nielsen (December 2018-2023)

  • Senior Vice President, IBM Watson (January 2016-2018) and IBM Cloud (November 2016-2018)

  • Chairman and CEO, The Weather Company (2012-2015)

  • President of Akamai (2011-2012)

  • Managing Partner, VivaKi (2006-2010)

  • Founder and CEO, Digitas, Inc., (1997- 2006)


Education: Mr. Kenny holds degrees from the GM Institute (now Kettering University) and Harvard University.


Key Qualifications & Experience:


Mr. Kenny brings more than 25 years of Chief Executive Officer experience to the Board. He uses his expertise in data and analytics, technology, and customer engagement to help Best Buy with its transformation and growth efforts, especially around capturing online share and using data responsibly to serve customers. His experience leading The Weather Company offers Best Buy strong environmental leadership and climate change expertise.



  • CEO / Executive Leadership – Mr. Kenny is Executive Chairman at Nielsen, a private global measurement and data analytics company. He also previously served as CEO of The Weather Company and Digitas Inc., a global marketing and technology agency for e-Commerce and multichannel companies. In addition, Mr. Kenny has held a variety of other executive roles over his career. He has 25 years of public company board experience. He has served on the board of several public companies including Yahoo, Akamai, Digitas and Nielsen.

  • Technology – As Senior Vice President of IBM Watson, Mr. Kenny led the company’s growth initiatives around cloud and artificial intelligence services. His online leadership dates to 1997, when he founded Digitas.

  • Customer Engagement – As the executive chairman of Nielsen, Mr. Kenny has a deep knowledge of consumer insights. As chairman and CEO of The Weather Company, acquired by IBM in 2016, he helped turn the organization into a media heavyweight that produced television programming, developed apps, published content and used analytics to connect businesses to consumers through weather and climate-related content.