Being in the business today’s women have broken the glass ceiling of the corporate world by occupying prominent positions in many of the Fortune 500 companies. They have proved the very notion wrong that women are not biologically build up to handle a large organization. Not only did they prove it wrong, even showed that they could handle it much better.
There are many cases where we have been dispensed with information, of women who ventured out into path-breaking career, activities and carved a unique place for themselves. They also have been named as some of the influential persons around the world.
Some Of The Most Influential And Powerful Women Around The World Are:
Melinda Gates (Philanthropist and co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation): Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation founded in 2000 is the world’s largest charitable foundation with a total fund amount of $40 billion. Melinda Gates as a co-chair of the foundation is an active member for the philanthropic activities, which helps the deprived people for living a healthy and productive life. She has worked mainly for women’s rights and plans to support the budding women entrepreneurs with her incubation company known as Pivotal Ventures.
Irene Rosenfeld (CEO of Kraft Foods): Kraft Foods is one of the leading food manufacturing companies around the world. Irene Rosenfeld joined this organization as a CEO in 2006. She previously worked in Frito Lay. Irene Rosenfeld took Kraft Foods to a new level of success by replacing AIG on the Dow Jones industrial average. The company also purchased the Cadbury brand with an exchange of more than ten million pounds.
Adena Friedman (CEO of Nasdaq): Adena Friedman became the first woman to become the CEO of the leading US stock exchange Nasdaq in 2017. She advocated for bringing companies to the public market and making it accessible. The strategy introduced worked, and 75% of the revenue started coming from the new sources. She plans to add bitcoin to the trading platform by 2019 for the crypto market.
Lynn Good (CEO of Duke energy): Duke Energy, a leading electric power holding company in the USA, has around 7.2 million customers. Lynn Good became the CEO of Duke Energy in 2013. Before that, she was serving as the Chief Financial Officer at the Duke Energy. Under her leadership, Duke Energy intensified its services for providing better services to the customers along with becoming a smarter and cleaner future energy provider.
Phebe Novakovic (CEO of General Dynamics): Phebe Novakovic became the CEO of General Dynamics in 2013. Before that, she was working as COO in the organization. After she became CEO, there were many significant improvements in the organization one of them, where the company received a $5 billion order for designing the next version of the ballistic-missile submarine for the US Navy in 2017.
Michelle Gass (CEO of Kohl’s): Kohl’s is one of the largest American departmental store having stores at around 1,158 locations. Michelle Gass became the company’s CEO in May 2018. She engineered most of the successful innovations which included activewear brands. Michelle Gass was ranked no. 21 out of 51 in the Fortune’s list of the Most Powerful Women in Business.
Oprah Winfrey (Founder of Harpo Productions): Oprah Winfrey is one of the famous faces in the American TV channel. The talk show called as “Oprah Winfrey Show” was aired for 25 consecutive seasons from 1986 till 2011. It was very influential and won the hearts of its viewers. She even has her own multimedia production company named Harpo productions which is currently based in West Hollywood, California and had annual revenue of about $150 million.
Angela Ahrendts (Vice president of retail at Apple Inc.): Apple has 500 stores spread over to 19 countries of the world and has a brand value of about 146.31 billion U.S. dollars. Angela Ahrendts joined Apple retail on October 14, 2013. She is the ex-CEO of the fashion house Burberry, and after joining Apple, she implemented her experience in the growth of the company. Fashion and technology are both high- speed industries where the latest products are introduced in the market very often within a short period. One of her greatest achievements was by the time she left for Apple, Burberry’s shares increased by three times over to approximately $9bn.
Susan Wojcicki (CEO of YouTube): Susan Wojcicki has been the CEO of YouTube since February 2014. The global video sharing site has made a strong and loyal user base with around 1.9 billion monthly users. She made many improvements in the technological process where the platform was able to avoid the scandals disturbing FaceBook.
Meg Whitman (Philanthropist and political activist): Meg Whitman served as a president and CEO of Hewlett Packard from 2011 to 2015. She is now one of the leading philanthropist and political activist. Her charitable trust is said to be worth around $108 million in assets donating for the philanthropic causes like health, education, environment, etc. Meg Whitman gave away $100,000 to an environmental defense fund. In 2007 there were five grants each of $5000 which went for the education sector. The foundation even invested an amount of US $4million in the hedge funds, $1 million in Ireland and $3 million Cayman island. She also served as a president and Chief Executive Officer of eBay, from 1998 to 2008. During ten years of her tenure at the company, the company saw an increase of $4 million annual revenue to $8 million annual revenue, and from 30 employees to more than 15,000 employees. In 2014, Meg Whitman was named 20th among 100 Most Powerful Women in the World in Forbes List. In 2017, she was the commencement speaker at the Carnegie Mellon University and was awarded doctorate degree.
Ruth Porat (CFO of Alphabet): Ruth Porat is the CFO of the Google parent company Alphabet. She was one of the top-level female executives who had active participation in the Google walkout for Real Change where she was asked many challenging questions from employees. Under her leadership, Alphabet beat the expectations on the Q2 earnings in 2018.
Amy Hood (CFO of Microsoft): Amy Hood has been Microsoft’s CFO since 2013. After she joined, within five years the company’s stock surged by 300%. She even shifted the money away from the legacy divisions of Microsoft and invested in the cloud computing division.
Lisa Davis (CEO of Siemens AG): Lisa Davis became CEO of Siemens Corp in January 2017. She successfully steered a megaproject which plans to increase Egypt’s power generation capacity by 50%. It is the largest single order in the history of Siemens AG.
