Jeff DeMarrais

Jeff DeMarrais leads Global Communications for Cognizant, and he is focused on helping drive the company’s brand and reputation worldwide. Cognizant’s reputation is created by articulating the company’s actions to a range of internal and external stakeholders and helping influence their opinions through traditional and social media.

Before joining Cognizant, DeMarrais was the executive director of Corporate Reputation for the biotech firm Amgen. In that role, he ran the company’s external messaging, crisis communications, and research and executive communications, as well as internal communications for enterprise-wide global functions. Before Amgen, DeMarrais served as IBM’s chief external relations officer, responsible for global media relations and resetting the company’s external narrative for the Watson, IBM Cloud, and innovations brands. Prior to that, he was chief communications officer of CA Technologies.

DeMarrais spent 17 years at GE and pioneered its use of social media. He holds a patent for the GE technologies that analyze social and traditional media metrics. While at GE, he was chief communications officer for several of the company’s global business units, including GE Healthcare, Technology Infrastructure, Plastics, Specialty Materials, and Transportation. He served as chief operating officer for GE’s global communications function and also led the communications strategy to expand GE’s Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) initiative outside the United States. He began his GE career at NBC, where he led the TV network’s technology PR.

Prior to his GE career, DeMarrais gained his love for all things digital when he led new media public relations efforts at John Wiley & Sons publishers.