Ex-IBM exec joins DataChannel: Lucie Fjeldstad accepts chief executive position.(Company Business and Marketing)(Interview)

A 25-year veteran of IBM, Lucie Fjeldstad retired after seeing more than her fair share of paradigm shifts. Last week she became president of DataChannel, a small start-up in Bellevue, Wash., that develops tools built on top of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) file format. Fjeldstad spoke with InfoWorld Executive News Editor Mike Vizard about why she decided to leave her consulting practice and take on a management position to help lead a company focused on emerging XML technologies.

InfoWorld: What exactly was your role at IBM, and how did you hook up with DataChannel?

Fjeldstad: I was with IBM for 25 years, ending up there as a corporate vice president and general manager of their multimedia business. But fundamentally, I'm a software engineer by trade and by profession.

I spent my last five years …