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Who Are the Most Powerful Women in Business?

Guest post by: Global BX

Article Overview: For many decades now, women have successfully gained prominent positions in the American corporate world. Once downgraded to roles of subservience, female executives nowadays continuously excel in huge companies throughout the country. For the last 12 years, Fortune business magazine has compiled a list of 50 most powerful women in business.

Who Are the Most Powerful Women in Business?

Powerful Women in the World

For many decades now, women have successfully gained prominent positions in the American corporate world. Once downgraded to roles of subservience, female executives nowadays continuously excel in huge companies throughout the country. For the last 12 years, Fortune business magazine has compiled a list of 50 most powerful women in business. Most of the names included in the list hold the highest positions in multi-national companies, while others are smoothly climbing up to that level. The characteristics of these women are not very much different from their male counterparts when it comes to intelligence, vision, and persistence, though many of them privately attest that attaining success in their careers took more effort. While it has always been believed that the business world is men's showground, there is still a certain thrill when a powerful woman manages to get through the so-called 'man's world'. When Fortune launched the Top 50 list back in 1998 only two women were in CEO positions, but the list this year already includes 13 women CEOs.

Most Powerful Women In Business 2009

Below are the names of the women who made it to the top 10 of Fortune magazine's list of the 50 most powerful women in business for 2009:

1. Indra Nooyi: Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Indra Nooyi topped the Fortune list for four consecutive years. She contributed a lot to the immeasurable success of the multi-national Food and Beverage Corporation. She also spearheaded the move to purchase two independent bottling companies, which is expected to save the company about $300 million every year.

2. Irene Rosenfeld: Chairman and CEO of Kraft Foods Strongly positioned in the number two spot, Irene Rosenfeld helped increase the company's annual revenue to 15 percent and played an integral role in making Kraft Foods part of the Dow 30, which is a very influential position.

3. Pat Woertz: Chairman, CEO, and President of Archer Daniels Midland A food-based corporate executive, Pat Woertz helped position her company to bet heavily on ethanol and saw a 15% increase in ADM's stock in 2008.

4. Angela Braly: President and CEO of Wellpoint Angela Braly is the top executive of the reputed healthcare insurance company that has 34 million members and has annual sales of over $61 billion. Braly saw her company benefit from a 71 percent stock increase in March 2009.

5. Andrea Jung: Chairman and CEO of Avon Products Avon has a remarkable worldwide following that promotes women empowerment by becoming mini entrepreneurs. With Andrea Jung's innovative method of recruitment, she successfully added more than 200,000 representatives in the US alone during the first quarter of 2009.

6. Oprah Winfrey: Chairman of Harpo Productions Oprah Winfrey is more than just a television host. Her entertainment company includes movies, print, and broadcast. She plans on launching her very own cable network with over 70 million viewers in estimation.

7. Ellen Kullman: CEO of DuPont Ellen Kullman started out in the X-ray film division of the company more than 20 years ago. She worked her way up the food chain and successfully made it to the CEO position in January 2009. This year, her impressive cost-cutting methods are anticipated to save the company from a billion-dollar loss.

8. Carol Bartz: CEO of Yahoo Carol Bartz came from Autodesk, a CAD software solutions provider, before she assumed the CEO role at Yahoo. She is expected to bring new life into the Yahoo brand. Her partnership association with Microsoft got her competitors' attention once again.

9. Ursula Burns: CEO of Xerox Ursula Burns was the very first African-American woman to become CEO of a company included in the Fortune 500 list. Burns lead her company away from bankruptcy in 2001. This year, Burns is also looking forward to seeing the company on its first profitable year.

10. Brenda Barnes: Chairman and CEO of Sara Lee Brenda Barnes has been successfully managing this thriving food manufacturing enterprise since 2005. She sold off a number of its unprofitable segments to help boost the company's stock value and market value.

The Best of Rest in the List

The following are the remaining highlights in the list of 50 Most Powerful Women in Business:

• Safra Catz: Co-President of Oracle In collaboration with Oracle CEO and founder Larry Ellison, Safra Catz helped in the negotiation for the upcoming merge with Sun Microsystems. The merge is worth $7.4 billion and is expected to give Oracle an annual profit of $1.5 billion.

• Carol Mayrowitz: CEO and President of TJX Corp. Despite economic downturns, Carol Mayrowitz led this retail conglomerate to $19 billion sales, which is a four percent increase, compared to the last couple of years.

• Liz Smith: President of Avon Products Avon is the only company that has two powerful women included in Fortune's list of top 50 most powerful women. Liz Smith earned this honor by guiding Avon's sales to an increase of 65 percent in 2008.

• Joanne Maguire: Executive Vice President of Lockheed Martin During her leadership role in Lockheed Martin's Space System division, Joanne Maguire contributed to the company's 11 percent increase in operating profits for 2008, in spite of a reported decrease in sales volume.

• Lorrie Norrington: President of eBay Lorrie Norrington, who came from an executive position at General Electric, helped build a corporate growth in the thriving Asian market. She also took part in streamlining the methods of payment to the millions of sellers at eBay.

What do these women have in common? They all have their own businesses.

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Article Tags: 100 powerful women, 50 most powerful women, 50 most powerful women in business, most powerful women



Related Forum Posts
A ton of Great Women - You might want to profile Teresa Cascioli of LakePort Brewery. She has an amazing story! I met her at at the celebratory luncheon for the Profit/Chatelaine Top 100 Women Business Owners. The Top 100 list is also a great resource for inspirational stories of Women Entrepreneurs.
New Study - Women prepare better business plans - I found an article in Business Week and I found this quite interesting. [quote:ka7lg35i]Who Prepares Better Business Plans, Men or Women? A new study based on four years of data from men and women in a training program for microenterprises finds that they come out the same in quality scores. "However, women scored significantly better on the presentation of their plan to judges," conclude the study's authors, Ronald G. Cook, Paul Belliveau, and Christine Lentz of Rider University, in a paper presented at a recent meeting of the Small Business Institute. [/quote:ka7lg35i] What do you guys think?
Re: History of Women in Business in the United States - Yes. Women have increasingly made positive economic contributions to society and their position is being recognized more and more as seen on the Forbes List of Executive Women. In general, women can be a bit more practical in their approach as entrepreneurs too.
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Re: Are entrepreneur women more organized than men? - Women are generally more organised than men. They have good instincts more than men. Women are generally aggressive when it come to business. You don't want to mess up with them.


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