Cooper Standard names Soma Venkat senior vice president, chief information technology officer

Northville, MI – Cooper Standard announced the appointment of Soma Venkat, Ph. D., to senior vice president and chief information technology officer, effective September 20. Based at the company’s world headquarters in Northville, Venkat is welcomed back to the company as an executive officer and will also join Cooper Standard’s global leadership team. In his new role, Venkat will be responsible for leading Cooper Standard’s information technology (IT) function.

“We are pleased to welcome Soma back to the Cooper Standard team,” said Jeffrey Edwards, chairman and CEO, Cooper Standard. “His wealth of experience leading and executing IT strategies within manufacturing, automotive, media, publishing and technology will be an asset as we continue the digital transformation and execution of our Driving Value plan.”

Most recently, Venkat served as chief information officer for IXS (Innovative Xcessories and Services), a provider of vehicle uplift services and coating solutions. In this role, Venkat was instrumental in turning around the IT team to successfully deliver multiple digitization, data and cyber security initiatives enabling business resilience during the COVID pandemic. From 2016 to 2020, Venkat held roles of increasing responsibility at Cooper Standard, most recently as global vice president, IT.

Prior, he was the co-founder and chief operating officer at the technology startup, InfoShuk. Previously, Venkat held IT leadership roles of increasing responsibility at Meritor, Masco Corp. and ProQuest. He started his career as a senior consultant at Oracle Corp.

Venkat earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the University of Madras in India and a Master of Applied Science degree in applied mathematics from The College of Engineering in Guindy, India. In addition, he holds a Master of Science degree in computational mathematics and a Ph.D. in computational mathematics from the University of Windsor in Canada. Venkat is a six sigma Black Belt and has also completed several executive certificates in management, program/strategic marketing and program/finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.