Background
He is a grandson of basketball player Bobby McDermott.
He is a grandson of basketball player Bobby McDermott.
The deli, Country Deli, paid his way through Dowling College, where he studied Business Management. After Dowling College, McDermott earned his Master of Business Administration from Northwestern University"s Kellogg School of Management. He completed the Executive Development Program at the Wharton School of Business.
From February 2010 until May 20, 2014 he was co-Chief Executive Officer of Systems, Applications and Products, along with Jim Hagemann Snabe. One of four children born to Kathleen (died 2010) and Bill McDermott, he was raised on Long Island, where he became an entrepreneur while still a teenager, by purchasing a local delicatessen for $7,000 in promissory notes. After running his own business through high school and college, he began his professional career at Xerox, where he worked for 17 years and rose through the ranks to become the company"s youngest division president
He then served as President of Gartner and Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales and Operations at Siebel Systems.
He was recruited to Systems, Applications and Products in 2002 as the Chief Executive Officer of Systems, Applications and Products America and quickly rose, adding to his responsibility South America, Asia Pacific and then Global Field Operations. In 2008 he was appointed to the Systems, Applications and Products Executive Board.
In February 2010, he became co-Chief Executive Officer of Systems, Applications and Products AG. On May 21, 2014, he was promoted to the position of sole Chief Executive Officer of the company, now known as Systems, Applications and Products Southeast. He became the first American to hold that position.
McDermott is a member of the Business Roundtable and the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERT).