Epsilon Award for Career Achievement: Dr. Tayo Ibikunle (JPMorgan Chase)

National BDPA annually selects and awards the BDPA Epsilon Award to recognize and celebrate key contributions and accomplishments of its members. Nominations are accepted across five categories and they are evaluated by a team of National BDPA members.

One of the categories is Career Achievement. This honor is reserved for highly experienced professionals who have significant career accomplishments or contributions throughout their career.

BDPA is pleased to announce that Dr. Tayo Ibikunle has won the 2013 Epsilon Award for Career Achievement. He is a highly respected technologist with over 18 years of technology based experience with JPMorgan Chase (JPMC). Tayo Ibikunle has also held diverse senior positions, across many key businesses – including Investment Banking, Middle Markets, Retail, Corporate Sector, Credit Card business, Mortgage Banking and most recently in Consumer & Community Banking. As Chief Technology Officer of the Chase Financial Services Customer Center of Excellence, Tayo was responsible for delivering information technology (IT) solutions to enable an integrated customer experience across customer channels and touch-points. He also assumed IT leadership responsibilities for the Middle Market business segment, which managed the firm’s relationships for over 12,000 corporate clients. Among other key roles, Tayo has held positions of Co-Chief IT Architect and Chief Technical Architect.

Prior to joining JPMC, Tayo was Senior Strategic Manager at Sybase Engineering in California. Before taking the role of Senior Strategic Manager, Tayo was a Principal Consultant working with several Wall Street and telecommunication Firms to build large scale, distributed trading and processing engines for their businesses. At Thorn EMI Central Research Laboratories in the United Kingdom, Tayo was a Principal Research Engineer and worked on key pattern recognition and image processing technologies

Dr. Ibikunle has both an MS and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College, University of London, as well as a BS in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University Of Ife, Nigeria. He is also a member of the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers (IEEE).

Tayo is a dedicated advocate for diversity within the workplace and serves as a mentor to many. Tayo took on the role of Executive Sponsor of JPMC’s engagement with BDPA – a major career and leadership network for Black IT professionals - in 2006. It is under his leadership that the JPMC BDPA Leadership Forum was established. This forum consists of representatives from various JPMC IT facilities across the United States where we have engaged with a local BDPA chapter. He is also on the Global Steering Committee for BOLD (Black Organization for Leadership Development) and a member of the Firm-wide Technology Diversity Council. Tayo serves as a director of the BDPA Education and Technology Foundation since his appointment in 2008.

The award nomination was submitted by BDPA Northern Delaware chapter president Karen Smith.