IN THE WORLD OF Self-Made, hoodie-wearing technology billionaires, Sheryl Sandberg has pulled off something improbable: She has joined their ranks without founding her own company or writing a single line of code.
The fact that Facebook’s chief operating officer is a woman is incidental, of course, but it’s also noteworthy: Of the 268 newcomers to the 2014 FORBES Billionaires list, 42 are women–a single-year record and, more notably, the highest-ever percentage of newcomers (and of women billionaires overall–172 out of 1,645 ).
That’s progress. But only a bit. Only 32 billionaire women–or 1.9% of all the globe’s billionaires–had a meaningful hand in building their own fortunes, as opposed to inheriting one from a parent or husband. Sandberg joins the dozen women, including Spanx’s Sara Blakely, fashion designer Tory Burch and Oprah Winfrey, who accomplished this feat without the help of a husband or sibling. And only she and Meg Whitman, who worked at Hasbro and FTD before joining eBay, accomplished this feat as hired hands of tech companies.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has parlayed her stints at Facebook and Google into a personal fortune worth more than $1 billion.
Thus Sandberg’s perspective, distilled in her bestseller, Lean In, seems doubly apt. In a recent interview with FORBES she said she was “real optimistic” about the dialogue and debate generated by her book, which exhorts professional women to pour more energy into their careers, stop tolerating that high achievers are termed “bossy” while their male counterparts are praised as “aggressive,” and pick partners who will share in parenting and household duties.
“Businesses are going to care about diversity not because they want to do good in the world,” says Sandberg. “They’re going to care about diversity if it’s going to change their bottom line.” She says that she hosts private “Lean In Circles” and, in her book, advocates for others to do the same. Over dinner at her home, other leading women hear from special guests. One speaker: Cisco CEO John Chambers. “What he understood is that it wasn’t about having women in your company but about having women in leadership roles. … If you have the best talent, you’re going to have the best performance.” That presumably will translate to more women like Sandberg shattering the ten-figure ceiling
SOURCE: FORBES
The fact that Facebook’s chief operating officer is a woman is incidental, of course, but it’s also noteworthy: Of the 268 newcomers to the 2014 FORBES Billionaires list, 42 are women–a single-year record and, more notably, the highest-ever percentage of newcomers (and of women billionaires overall–172 out of 1,645 ).
That’s progress. But only a bit. Only 32 billionaire women–or 1.9% of all the globe’s billionaires–had a meaningful hand in building their own fortunes, as opposed to inheriting one from a parent or husband. Sandberg joins the dozen women, including Spanx’s Sara Blakely, fashion designer Tory Burch and Oprah Winfrey, who accomplished this feat without the help of a husband or sibling. And only she and Meg Whitman, who worked at Hasbro and FTD before joining eBay, accomplished this feat as hired hands of tech companies.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has parlayed her stints at Facebook and Google into a personal fortune worth more than $1 billion.
Thus Sandberg’s perspective, distilled in her bestseller, Lean In, seems doubly apt. In a recent interview with FORBES she said she was “real optimistic” about the dialogue and debate generated by her book, which exhorts professional women to pour more energy into their careers, stop tolerating that high achievers are termed “bossy” while their male counterparts are praised as “aggressive,” and pick partners who will share in parenting and household duties.
“Businesses are going to care about diversity not because they want to do good in the world,” says Sandberg. “They’re going to care about diversity if it’s going to change their bottom line.” She says that she hosts private “Lean In Circles” and, in her book, advocates for others to do the same. Over dinner at her home, other leading women hear from special guests. One speaker: Cisco CEO John Chambers. “What he understood is that it wasn’t about having women in your company but about having women in leadership roles. … If you have the best talent, you’re going to have the best performance.” That presumably will translate to more women like Sandberg shattering the ten-figure ceiling
SOURCE: FORBES
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