World's 10 Most Powerful Women
Starting in 2004, Forbes magazine has made a list of
the 100 most powerful women in the world. It is edited by notable Forbes
journalists including Moira Forbes, and based on visibility and economic
impact. Leading the table seven times in the last eight years, Angela Merkel, Chancellor
of Germany is understood to be the world's most powerful woman of 2013.
Angela Merkel:
Angela
Dorothea Merkel (born 17 July 1954) is a German politician and former research
scientist, who have been the Chancellor of Germany since 2005 and the leader of
the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since 2000. She is the first woman to hold
either office.
Having earned a doctorate as physical chemist,
Merkel entered politics in the wake of the Revolutions of 1989, briefly serving
as the deputy spokesperson for the East German Government. Following reunification
in 1990, she was elected to the Bundestag for Stralsund-Nordvorpommern-Rügen in
the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a seat she has held since. She was later
appointed as the Federal Minister for Women and Youth in 1991 under Chancellor Helmut
Kohl, She was promoted to become Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature
Conservation, and Nuclear Safety in 1994. After the CDU/CSU coalition was defeated
in 1998, she was elected Secretary-General of the CDU, before being elected the
party's first ever woman as leader in 2000.
Following the 2005 federal election, she was
appointed Germany's
first female Chancellor at the head of a grand coalition consisting of her own
CDU party, its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the
Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In the 2009 federal election, the CDU
obtained the largest share of the vote, and Merkel was able to form a coalition
government with the support of the CSU, and the Free Democratic Party (FDP). At
the 2013 federal election, Merkel led the CDU/CSU to a landslide victory with
41.5% of the vote and formed a second grand coalition with the SPD, after the
FDP lost all of its representation in the Bundestag.
In 2007, Merkel was President of the European
Council and chaired the G8, the second woman (after Margaret Thatcher) to do
so. She played a central role in the negotiation of the Treaty of Lisbon and
the Berlin Declaration. One of her priorities was also to strengthen
transatlantic economic relations by signing the agreement for the Transatlantic
Economic Council on 30 April 2007. Merkel is seen as playing a crucial role in
managing the financial crisis at the European and international level, and has
been referred to as "the decider." In domestic policy, health care
reform and problems concerning future energy development have been major issues
of her tenure.
Angela Merkel has been described as the de facto leader of the European Union,
and was ranked as the world's second most powerful person by Forbes magazine in 2012; the highest
ranking ever achieved by a woman, and is now ranked fifth.
Dilma Rousseff:
Dilma
Vana Rousseff (born 14 December 1947) is a Brazilian politician who has
been the 36th President of Brazil since 1 January 2011. She is the first woman
to hold the office. She was previously the Chief of Staff to President Luiz
Inácio Lula da Silva from 2005 to 2010.The daughter of a Bulgarian
entrepreneur, Rousseff was raised in an upper middle class household in Belo Horizonte.
In 2002, Rousseff joined the committee
responsible for the energy policy of presidential candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da
Silva, who, after winning the election, invited her to become Minister of
Energy. In 2005, a political crisis triggered by a corruption scandal led to
the resignation of Chief of Staff José Dirceu. Rousseff took over the post,
remaining in office until 31 March 2010, when she stepped down in order to run
for President. She was elected in a run-off on 31 October 2010.
Melinda Gates:
Melinda French Gates (born August 15, 1964) is an American
businesswoman, philanthropist and co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation. She is the wife of Bill Gates, whom she met while working at Microsoft,
where she was project manager for Microsoft Bob, Microsoft Encarta and Expedia.
Gates was born in 1964 in Dallas, Texas.
She was the second of four children born to Raymond Joseph French Jr., an engineer,
and Elaine Agnes Amerland, a homemaker. She has an older sister and two younger
brothers. Gates, a Roman Catholic, attended St. Monica Catholic School, where
she was the top student in her class year. She graduated as valedictorian from Ursuline
Academy of Dallas in 1982. Gates earned a bachelor's degree in computer science
and economics from Duke
University in 1986 and an
MBA from Duke's Fuqua School of Business in 1987. She was a member of the Kappa
Alpha Theta sorority, Beta Rho Chapter, at Duke University.Shortly thereafter,
she joined Microsoft and participated in the development of many of Microsoft’s
multimedia products including Publisher, Microsoft Bob, Encarta, and Expedia.
In 1994, she married Bill Gates in a private
ceremony held in Lanai, Hawaii. Shortly thereafter, she left
Microsoft to focus on starting and raising her family. Her last position was
Microsoft’s General Manager of Information Products. Melinda and Bill Gates
have three children: daughters Jennifer Katharine Gates (born 1996) and Phoebe
Adele Gates (born 2002), and son Rory John Gates (born 1999). The family
resides in a large mansion on the shore
of Lake Washington.
Gates served as a member of Duke University's
board of trustees from 1996 to 2003.Gates attends Bilderberg Group conferences
and holds a seat on the board of directors of the Washington Post company. She
retired from the board of Drugstore.com in August 2006 to spend more time
working for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. As of 2009, Melinda and
Bill Gates have donated more than US$24 billion to the Foundation. In 2002,
Melinda and Bill Gates received the Award for Greatest Public Service
Benefiting the Disadvantaged, an award given out annually by Jefferson
Awards.
In December 2005, Melinda and Bill Gates were
named by Time as Persons of the Year alongside Bono. Melinda and Bill
Gates received the Spanish Prince of Asturias Award for International
Cooperation on May 4, 2006 in recognition of their world impact through
charitable giving. In November 2006, Melinda and Bill Gates were awarded the Order
of the Aztec Eagle for their philanthropic work around the world in the areas
of health and education, particularly in Mexico, and specifically in the
program "Un país de lectores".She was ranked #3 in Forbes 2013
list of the 100 Most Powerful Women, #4 in 2012 and #6 in 2011.Gates has also
donated over $10 million to her high school Ursuline Academy of Dallas. She is
one of the major donors of their Facing the Future Campaign and was
honored in their dedication ceremony on May 7, 2010.
Michelle Obama:
Michelle
LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964), an American lawyer and
writer, is the wife of the 44th and current President of the United States, Barack
Obama, and the first African-American First Lady of the United States. Raised
on the South Side of Chicago, Obama attended Princeton
University and Harvard
Law School
before returning to Chicago
to work at the law firm Sidley Austin, where she met her future husband.
Subsequently, she worked as part of the staff of Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, and for the University
of Chicago Medical Center.
Throughout 2007 and 2008, she helped campaign for
her husband's presidential bid. She delivered a keynote address at the 2008
Democratic National Convention and also spoke at the 2012 Democratic National
Convention. She is the mother of daughters Malia and Natasha (Sasha). As the
wife of a Senator, and later the First Lady, she has become a fashion icon and
role model for women, and an advocate for poverty awareness, nutrition, and
healthy eating.
Following law school, she was an associate at the
Chicago office
of the law firm Sidley Austin, where she first met her future husband. At the
firm, she worked on marketing and intellectual property. She continues to hold
her law license, but as she no longer needs it for her work, it has been on a
voluntary inactive status since 1993.In 1991, she held public sector positions
in the Chicago
city government as an Assistant to the Mayor, and as Assistant Commissioner of
Planning and Development. In 1993, she became Executive Director for the Chicago office of Public
Allies, a non-profit organization encouraging young people to work on social
issues in non-profit groups and government agencies. She worked there nearly
four years and set fundraising records for the organization that still stood 12
years after she left.
Hillary Rodham Clinton:
Hillary
Diane Rodham Clinton (born October 26, 1947) is a former United States
Secretary of State, U.S.
Senator, and First Lady of the United
States. From 2009 to 2013, she was the 67th
Secretary of State, serving under President Barack Obama. She previously
represented New York
in the U.S. Senate (2001 to 2009). Before that, as the wife of President Bill
Clinton, she was First Lady from 1993 to 2001. In the 2008 election, Clinton was a leading candidate
for the Democratic presidential nomination.
A native of Illinois,
Hillary Rodham was the first student commencement speaker at Wellesley College
in 1969. She then earned a J.D. from Yale
Law School
in 1973. After a brief stint as a Congressional legal counsel, she moved to Arkansas and married Bill
Clinton in 1975. Rodham cofounded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families
in 1977. In 1978, she became the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation
and in 1979 the first female partner at Rose Law Firm. The National Law
Journal twice listed her as one of the hundred most influential lawyers in America. As
First Lady of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and 1983 to 1992 with husband Bill as
Governor, she led a task force that reformed Arkansas's education system. During that
time, she was on the board of Wal-Mart and several other corporations.
In 1994, as First Lady of the United States, her major initiative, the Clinton health care plan,
failed to gain approval from the U.S. Congress. However, in 1997 and 1999, Clinton played a leading
role in advocating the creation of the State Children's Health Insurance
Program, the Adoption and Safe Families Act, and the Foster Care Independence
Act. Her years as First Lady drew a polarized response from the American
public. The only First Lady to have been subpoenaed, she testified before a
federal grand jury in 1996 regarding the Whitewater controversy, but was never
charged with wrongdoing in this or several other investigations during the
Clinton presidency. Her marriage also endured the Lewinsky scandal in 1998.
After moving to the state, Clinton
was elected the first female Senator from New York; she is the only First Lady ever to
have run for public office. Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks,
she supported military action in Afghanistan
and the Iraq War Resolution, but subsequently objected to the George W. Bush
administration's conduct of the war in Iraq and continued to oppose most
of its domestic policies. Clinton
was reelected to the Senate in 2006. Running in the 2008 Democratic
presidential primaries, Hillary Clinton won far more primaries and delegates than
any other female candidate in American history, but narrowly lost the
nomination to U.S. Senator Barack Obama, who went on to win the national
election.
Obama nominated Clinton to be Secretary of State, and she was
confirmed by the Senate in January 2009. She was at the forefront of the U.S. response to the Arab Spring, including
advocating for the U.S.
military intervention in Libya.
As Secretary of State, she took responsibility for security lapses related to
the 2012 Benghazi
attack, which resulted in the deaths of American consulate personnel, but
defended her personal actions in regard to the matter. Clinton visited more countries than any other
Secretary of State. She viewed "smart power" as the strategy for
asserting U.S.
leadership and values, by combining military power with diplomacy and American
capabilities in economics, technology, and other areas. She encouraged
empowerment of women everywhere, and used social media to communicate the U.S. message
abroad.
Sheryl Sandberg:
Sheryl Kara Sandberg (born August
28, 1969) is an American businesswoman. As of August 2013, she is the chief
operating officer of Facebook. In June 2012, she was also elected to the board
of directors by the existing board members, becoming the first woman to serve
on Facebook's board. Before Facebook, Sandberg was Vice President of Global
Online Sales and Operations at Google, and was involved in launching Google's
philanthropic arm Google.org. Before Google, Sandberg served as chief of staff
for the United States Secretary of the Treasury.In 2012 she was named in the
Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world
according to Time magazine. As of January 2014, Sandberg is reported to be
worth over US$1 billion, due to her stock holdings in Facebook and other
companies.
Sandberg was born in 1969, in Washington, D.C.,
in a Jewish family, the daughter of Adele (née Einhorn) and Joel Sandberg, and
the oldest of three children. Her father is an ophthalmologist, and her mother
has a PhD and worked as a French teacher before concentrating on raising her
children. Her family moved to North
Miami Beach, Florida,
when she was two years old. She attended public school, where she was
"always at the top of her class." Sandberg taught aerobics in the
1980s while in high school. In 1987, Sandberg enrolled at Harvard College
and graduated in 1991 summa cum laude with an A.B. in economics and was awarded
the John H. Williams Prize for the top graduating student in economics. While
at Harvard, Sandberg met then-professor Larry Summers who became her mentor and
thesis adviser. Summers recruited her to be his research assistant at the World
Bank, where she worked for approximately one year on health projects in India dealing
with leprosy, AIDS, and blindness. In 1993, she enrolled at Harvard Business
School and in 1995 she
earned her M.B.A. with highest distinction.
After graduating from business
school in the spring of 1995, Sandberg worked as a management consultant for McKinsey
& Company for approximately one year (1995-96.). From 1996 to 2001,
Sandberg served as Chief of Staff to then United States Secretary of the
Treasury Larry Summers under President Bill Clinton where she helped lead the
Treasury’s work on forgiving debt in the developing world during the Asian financial
crisis. She joined Google Inc. in 2001 and served as its Vice President of
Global Online Sales & Operations, from November 2001 to March 2008. She was
responsible for online sales of Google's advertising & publishing products
and also for sales operations of Google's consumer products & Google Book
Search.
In late 2007, Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and
chief executive of Facebook, met Sandberg at a Christmas party held by Dan
Rosensweig; at the time, she was considering becoming a senior executive for The
Washington Post Company. Zuckerberg had no formal search for a COO, but thought
of Sandberg as "a perfect fit" for this role. They spent more time
together in January 2008 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland,
and in March 2008, Facebook announced hiring Sheryl Sandberg away from Google. After
joining the company, Sandberg quickly began trying to figure out how to make
Facebook profitable. Before she joined, the company was "primarily
interested in building a really cool site; profits, they assumed, would
follow." By late spring, Facebook's leadership had agreed to rely on
advertising, "with the ads discreetly presented"; by 2010, Facebook
became profitable. According to Facebook, Sandberg oversees the firm's business
operations including sales, marketing, business development, human resources, public
policy and communications.
Sandberg's executive compensation for FY 2011 was $300,000 base salary plus
$30,491,613 in FB shares. According to her Form 3, she also owns 38,122,000 stock
options and restricted stock units (worth approx. $1.45 billion as of mid-May
2012) that will be completely vested by May 2022, subject to her continued
employment through the vesting date. In 2012 she became the eighth member (and
the first female member) of Facebook's board of directors. In October 2012,
Business Insider reported that stock units (appx. 34 million) vested in
Sandberg's name accounted for nearly US$790,000,000. Facebook withheld roughly
15 million of those stocks for tax reasons, leaving Sandberg with nearly
US$417,000,000. The media reported on August 12, 2013 that Sandberg sold 2.4m
shares in the company worth US$91 million (£51 million)—5 percent of her total
stake in the company. Christine Lagarde:
Christine
Madeleine Odette Lagarde (born 1 January 1956) is a French lawyer and Union for a Popular Movement politician who has been the Managing
Director (MD) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since 5 July 2011.
Previously, she held various ministerial posts in the French government: she was
Minister of Economic Affairs, Finance and Employment and before that Minister
of Agriculture and Fishing and Minister of Trade in the government of Dominique
de Villepin. Lagarde was the first woman to become finance minister of a G8
economy, and is the first woman to head the IMF.
A noted antitrust and labor lawyer, Lagarde
became the first female chairman of the international law firm Baker &
McKenzie. On 16 November 2009, the Financial Times ranked her the best Minister
of Finance in the Eurozone. On 28 June 2011, she was named as the next MD of
the IMF for a five-year term, starting on 5 July 2011, replacing Dominique
Strauss-Kahn. Her appointment is the 11th consecutive appointment of a European
to head the IMF. In 2011, Lagarde was ranked the 8th most powerful woman in the
world by Forbes magazine. On 29 October Lagarde accepted an honorary
doctoral degree from the KU Leuven, in Courtray.
Lagarde was born in Paris, France
into a family of academics. Her father, Robert Lallouette, was a Professor of English;
her mother, Nicole, was a Latin teacher. Lagarde and her three brothers, all
younger, spent their childhood in Le
Havre where she attended the Lycée François 1er and Lycée
Claude Monet. As a teenager, Lagarde was a member of the French national
synchronised swimming team. After her baccalauréat in 1973, she went on an American
Field Service scholarship to the Holton-Arms
School for girls in Bethesda, Maryland.
During her year in America,
Lagarde worked as an intern at the United States Capitol, as Representative William
Cohen's congressional assistant, helping him correspond with his
French-speaking constituents during the Watergate hearings. She graduated from Paris
West University Nanterre La Défense, where she obtained Master's degrees in
English, labor law, and social law. She also holds a master's degree from the Institut
d'études politiques d'Aix-en-Provence. Since 2010, she has presided over
Sciences Po Aix's board of directors. She also prepared for ENA's entrance exam
but ultimately failed to gain admission to the elite public administration
school. Lagarde is divorced and has two sons, Pierre-Henri Lagarde (born 1986)
and Thomas Lagarde (born 1988). Since 2006, her partner has been the
entrepreneur Xavier Giocanti from Marseille. She is a vegetarian and very
rarely drinks alcohol. Her hobbies include regular trips to the gym, cycling
and swimming.
Janet Napolitano:
Janet Ann
Napolitano (born November 29, 1957) is an American politician and lawyer
who is the 20th and current president of the University of California
system. Napolitano is the first woman to serve as the United States Secretary
of Homeland Security, in office from 2009 to 2013. Napolitano, a member of the Democratic
Party, served in the administration of President Barack Obama. Previously, she
was the 21st Governor of Arizona from 2003 to 2009. She was Arizona's third female governor, and the
first woman to win re-election. Prior to her election as Governor, she served
as Attorney General of Arizona from 1999 to 2002. She was the first woman and
the 23rd person to serve in that office. Napolitano is the 1977 Truman Scholar from
New Mexico.
Napolitano is the fourth person (including an
acting Secretary) to serve as Secretary of Homeland Security, a post that was
created after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Forbes ranked her as the
world's ninth most powerful woman in 2012.In 2008, she was cited by The New
York Times to be among the women most likely to become the first female
President of the United
States. Napolitano resigned at the end of
August 2013 to become the first woman to be President of the University of California
system.
Janet Napolitano was born on
November 29, 1957, in New York City, the
daughter of Jane Marie (née Winer) and Leonard Michael Napolitano, who was the
dean of the University
Of New Mexico School Of Medicine.
Her father was of Italian descent and her mother had German and Austrian
ancestry. Napolitano is a Methodist. She was the eldest of three children; she
has a younger brother and sister. She was raised in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, and Albuquerque,
New Mexico, where she graduated from Sandia High School
in Albuquerque
in 1975 and was voted Most Likely to Succeed. She graduated from Santa Clara University
in Santa Clara, California, where she won a Truman Scholarship,
and was valedictorian. In 1978, she studied for a term at the London School of
Economics as part of Santa Clara's
exchange programme through IES Abroad. She then received her Juris Doctor (J.D.)
from the University
Of Virginia School Of Law.
After law school she served as a law clerk for Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the United
States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and then joined Schroeder's
former firm, Lewis and Roca located in Phoenix.In March 2009, Napolitano
received the Council on Litigation Management's Professionalism Award, which
recognizes and commemorates an individual who has demonstrated the unique
ability to lead others by example in the highest standard of their profession.
Sonia Gandhi:
Sonia
Gandhi (born 9 December 1946) is an Italy-born Indian politician, who
has served as President of the Indian National Congress party since 1998. She
is the widow of former Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi who belonged to
the Nehru–Gandhi family. After her husband's assassination in 1991, she was
invited by Congress leaders to take over the government; but she refused and
publicly stayed away from politics amidst constant prodding from the party. She
finally agreed to join politics in 1997; in 1998, she was elected President of
the Congress.
She has served as the Chairperson of the ruling United
Progressive Alliance in the Lok Sabha since 2004. In September 2010, on being
re-elected for the fourth time, she became the longest serving president in the
125-year history of the Congress party. Her foreign birth has been a subject of much
debate and controversy. Although Sonia is the fifth foreign-born person to be
leader of the Congress Party, she is the first since independence in 1947.
In 1964, she went to study English at the Bell
Educational Trust's language school in the city of Cambridge. She met Rajiv Gandhi, who was
enrolled in Trinity College at the University of Cambridge
in 1965 at a Greek restaurant (the Varsity Restaurant) while working there as a
Steward to make ends meet. Sonia and Rajiv Gandhi married in 1968, in a Hindu
ceremony following which she moved into the house of her mother-in-law and then
Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi.
Indra Nooyi:
Indra
Krishnamurthy Nooyi (born 28 October 1955) is an Indian-American
business executive and the current Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of PepsiCo,
the second largest food and beverage business in the world by net revenue.
According to Forbes, she is consistently ranked among the World's 100
Most Powerful Women. In 2013, she has been ranked 10th in the list of Forbes
World's 100 most powerful women.
Nooyi was born in Madras
(presently Chennai), Tamil Nadu, India. She was educated at Holy Angels Anglo Indian
Higher Secondary
School in Madras.
She received a Bachelor's degree in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics from Madras Christian
College in 1974 and a Post Graduate
Diploma in Management (MBA) from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta in 1976.
Beginning her career in India,
Nooyi held product manager positions at Johnson & Johnson and textile firm
Mettur Beardsell. She was admitted to Yale School of Management in 1978 and
earned a Master's degree in Public and Private Management. While at Yale, she
completed her summer internship with Booz Allen Hamilton. Graduating in 1980, Nooyi
joined the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and then held strategy positions at Motorola
and Asea Brown Boveri.
