The Interpreter

Ronna-Renee Jackson bridges technology gaps in business

Ronna-Renee Jackson is executive director of the Chattanooga Technology Council.
Ronna-Renee Jackson is executive director of the Chattanooga Technology Council.

Ronna-Reneee Jackson grew up in an IBM family and spent more than two decades in IT-related management jobs for IBM and Unum before venturing into nonprofit tech groups in Chattanooga. But for all her tech savvy, Jackson hasn't written a line of computer code or spent time with much hands-on hardware or software design. Her genius is in identifying how businesses can use technology and how technology can better understand and serve business needs.

"I'm an interpreter," she says. "I really like to be at that intersection of business and technology."

Those skills made her an ideal candidate to help analyze and later lead the Chattanooga Technology Council over the past three years. Jackson has worked to build the local association's membership and programs to help develop and serve Chattanooga's growing tech community and its business needs. The Chattanooga tech council is one of 56 in the country that are a part of the Technology Councils of North America, including other tech councils in both Nashville and Memphis.

ChaTech, as it bills itself, has about 100 member companies and is working this year to bring back the devLink Technical Conference, which grew in Chattanooga from 2006 to 2014 to include more than 800 software programmers from around the globe. ChaTech, which meets every month for luncheon meetings, also sponsors seminars, awards and job networking programs.

Jackson is also helping to build future talent for technology, especially to help other girls and women follow in her path.

As the daughter of an IBM manager, Jackson joined Big Blue after going to school at the University of Florida. At IBM early in her career, Jackson worked as the company's global program director building a leasing program for the software giant SAP. When the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 hit America, Jackson, her husband Jeff and their 4-month-old son decided to move back to her husband's hometown of Chattanooga.

Jackson worked nearly nine years at Unum, managing 110 employees and 80 contractors to support administrative and compensation programs, when a buyout offer gave her a mid-career opportunity to start her own business. That venture, known as Carisch-Jackson Associates, coached others ) to help coach others and helped develop the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) school in Chattanooga, where her son is now a freshman.

"To see the STEM school from idea to implementation and to now see its success touching my own son has been fantastic and is another asset for our technology community," she says.

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