In honor of National Women’s History Month and the upcoming launch of our new site, The Wild WE wants to highlight a few of history’s “Wild Women Entrepreneurs”. We hope their stories inspire YOU to harness that Wildness we know is within and make your dreams come true. Natalie Cole sang it, we want to see YOU live it: Wild Women Do…and they don’t regret it!
Meg Whitman (former CEO of eBay)
Meg Whitman is 52-year-old billionaire and the former CEO of eBay. In her high school years she wanted to have a career in medicine, but after her experience at a summer job, Meg shifted her direction towards business studies. She graduated with an economics degree in 1977 and after two years had her MBA at Harvard Business School.
Whitman’s first job was at Proctor & Gamble Company in Cincinnati. She started as a brand assistant and in 1981 was promoted to brand manager. After leaving P&G, she worked as vice president at the consulting firm of Bain & Company, where she worked for the next eight years.
In 1989, Whitman moved to the Walt Disney Corporation, where she worked as a senior vice president of marketing at Disney’s consumer-products division. Meanwhile, she launched the first Disney store in Japan.
That was when eBay, a new online auction site, approached her. Whitman refused even to consider the offer in the beginning. She once said that a “no-name Internet company” simply held no appeal for her (Salon.com, November 27, 2001). The headhunter persisted, however, and finally Whitman agreed to meet with executives at the eBay offices in San Jose. In March 1998, she joined eBay.
Now Meg is the richest woman CEO in America, thanks to her eBay stock options and the company’s astonishing IPO in 1998. On Fortune’s Most Powerful Women of 2006 list, she was ranked 22.
But her journey doesn’t end here; Whitman became president of Stride Rite, a division of the shoe maker that manufactures Keds, and a chief executive of Florists Transworld Delivery (FTD). She has also worked with Hasbro Inc.’s preschool division, where she took the responsibility for global marketing of Playskool and Mr. Potato Head brands.
Meg Whitman is undoubtedly one of the most successful—and hardest working—female CEOs ever!
