Meg Whitman was born in 1957 and she grew up in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York. When Whitman entered Princeton University, she planned a career in medicine, but she became an economics major after a summer job selling advertising for a campus publication. She graduated with an economics degree in 1977 and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School two years later. Whitman joined Procter & Gamble, later worked for the consulting firms of: Bain & Co., Walt Disney, Stride Rite Shoes, Florists' Tran world Delivery (FTD), and Hasbro. At Hasbro, she was responsible for marketing Playskool and Mr. Potato Head brands. Whitman, now 49, joined eBay in1998 as president and CEO, has helped turn it into a major Internet presence, visited by some seven million people daily. As ruler of the world's biggest online auction site, Whitman, has successfully beaten back stiff competition from Amazon.com and Yahoo. To do that, she has swiftly fixed any problems, has faithfully tried to weed out the fakes on her site and has posted a consistent flow of profits, making eBay the world's most valuable Internet brand. On paper at least, Whitman who is married to Griffith R. Harsh IV, a neurosurgeon, is a multi-billionaire and one of the richest woman CEOs in the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meg_Whitman Leadership and Motivation: Personal traits:
Flexible and Adaptable
The business world is continuously evolving and the demands for new ideas are uprising. In such situation, Whitman is comfortable going with the flow, rather than being rigid. In order to maximize output and to cope with today's diverse workforce, Meg Whitman thinks both in terms of flexibility and adaptability. What started out as a pure consumer-to-consumer auction marketplace, is now inviting large and small businesses to sell to consumers and other businesses. For example, Whitman decided to buy Billpoint, an online system that allowed payments by e-mail,