Francisco D'Souza elevated to Vice Chairman at Cognizant, retains CEO post

The appointment comes almost a year after its previous Vice Chairman Lakshmi Narayanan stepped down by not seeking re-election

Cognizant has announced Francisco D'Souza, its current Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and a member of the Board of Directors, as the Vice Chairman of the Board. He will be holding the position in addition to his current role as CEO. 

The appointment comes almost a year after its previous Vice Chairman Lakshmi Narayanan opted out of the Board by not seeking re-election. Both D'Souza and Narayanan are co-founders of the Nasdaq-listed IT services company, which was founded in 1994. 

Announcing the appointment, John Klein, Chairman of the Cognizant Board of Directors, said that he would like to recognize D'Souza for his remarkable contributions since he was named CEO in 2007. 

"Since he assumed the role, Cognizant has grown more than seven-fold, to a Fortune 200 company with nearly $15 billion in revenues in 2017," he said. When D'Souza assumed the role of CEO in 2007, Cognizant’s revenue stood at $2.1 billion. This grew to $14.8 billion in 2017. 

Cognizant has been consistently ranked as one of Fortune's Most Admired Companies with D'Souza at the helm. He was also recognised as one of America's Best CEOs by Institutional Investor and as one of the top ten on Fortune's Businessperson of the Year ranking. "We all look forward to Francisco's continued contributions to the company," added Klein. 

The company's leadership team has been at the vanguard of the shifts in technology, and the company has invested significantly in digital technologies over the past several years to achieve a differentiated market position. 

"It's a great honour to be named Vice Chairman of Cognizant's Board," said D'Souza. "The many accomplishments of Cognizant over the years belong to the talented leadership team and to our dedicated group of more than 260,000 associates around the globe who work tirelessly to help our clients build stronger businesses.  I'm grateful to all of them and look forward to even greater successes from this team in the years ahead." 

Born in Kenya and the son of an Indian diplomat, Francisco is a global citizen who has lived in nine countries and travelled extensively to many more. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from the University of Macau and an MBA degree from Carnegie Mellon University.