Profile

Nazih Hage is a native of Lebanon.  His country was at war when he was ready to go to college.  He needed to go to school in Liberia.  Nazih decided to transfer to the United States to finish his degree.  He was accepted at the University of Southern California.  At the time, he was seeing a girl who lived in Virginia.  She planned to attend WVU.  He decided to visit her at WVU.  Before he knew it, he decided to stay at WVU for his education.

When Nazih completed his Bachelors and Masters degrees from the Industrial Engineering program at WVU, he was offered three jobs with IBM.  His first assignment was in Finance on a team consisting of MBA’s from Stanford and Wharton.  He led the team.

Early into his career, Nazih created a database that reconciled purchase estimates with the actual procurement costs.  The site manager was excited about Nazih’s work and from that moment on Nazih’s work became standard practice.

Nazih fondly recalls his boss responding to any problem by saying: “That’s a piece of cake.  Ask Nazih what to do.”  Throughout his career, Nazih has been consulted whenever a difficult analysis needed to be done.

Nazih spent part of his career running IBM’s business unit in all of Southern Europe.  One time IBM was competing with CSC, Accenture, and Hewlett Packard for a major account.  When it came to a decision, the client told the head of all of IBM’s operations: “We’ll give you the job if you commit to having Nazih as our account manager.”

Throughout Nazih’s career, he has been able to pick his jobs and locations because IBM has valued his analytical skills and his approach to problem solving.  Nazih credits our program with giving him those skills.

Nazih has faced some discrimination coming from a country in the Middle East.  But he has a philosophical approach to this.  “You can’t make yourself a victim,” Nazih says. “The quality of your work will overcome the discrimination you may feel.”

Bio

A thirty four year veteran of IBM, Nazih has strong leadership experience in finance, business and IT operations. He spent the first sixteen years in finance in leadership roles supporting Manufacturing and Development, Sales and Distribution, and Global Technology Services. In 1998, Nazih joined the Global Technology Services Executive team where he spent the next eighteen years in Strategic Outsourcing Service Delivery and Client Relations, Technology and Innovation and Infrastructure Services Business operations. Nazih has strong leadership, finance and operations skills, and is very effective in building organizational capabilities and being a change agent. This has given him the opportunity to contribute to IBM’s success in twenty one different jobs in the US and Europe, and helped him leave behind a proven track record of outstanding accomplishments.

 Nazih grew up in Lebanon in the beautiful mountains 20 minutes east of Beirut. He left in 1975, when the civil war started, and went to Liberia, West Africa, where he attended the University of Liberia for two years. In July 1978, Nazih moved to the United States to go to the University of Southern California and continue his education in Civil Engineering. Before he left the East coast, he decided to go to Morgantown to visit a friend. On his flight from Washington, DC to Morgantown, he sat next to Dr. Richard Ward, Faculty member of the Industrial Engineering department, an event that changed Nazih’s life. Nazih ended up staying in Morgantown, attended the Industrial Engineering department where he graduated with a BS in Industrial Engineering and a MS in Operations Research in 1980 and December 1981, respectively.

Nazih is married, has two boys, and currently lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

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