January 22, 2008 – Business Management Article
Margaret Whitman, the chief executive (CEO) of eBay, is planning to retire so as to breathe fresh life into the company and a much needed radical reinvention of eBay. In March, Ms. Whitman, 51, will have served in the position for 10 years.
Whitman, ranks 22nd on Forbes.com’s list of the world’s most powerful women. In October 2002, Fortune Magazine ranked Whitman, as the world’s third most powerful women in business, after Carly Fiorina and Oprah Winfrey. Under her leadership, eBay’s revenues and profits doubled every year.
Whitman, joined eBay as chief executive in 1998. Under her leadership and her strong belief in eBay’s business model and its customers, Revenues increased from $4 million to $1 billion by late 2002. Whitman led eBay towards success even when many dotcoms crashed.
“In the beginning, I was certainly not an entrepreneur who came up with the idea, but I think I was fairly entrepreneurial in trying to figure out how to bring that idea to life and build a backbone for the company that could take it to the next level,” Whitman commenting on her journey from a novice to a leader in the dotcom world.
Margaret C. Whitman was born in August 1956. She was popularly known as Meg Whitman and ‘darling of the Internet’. Whitman, a studious and clever student, and the youngest child of a Wall Street executive grew up in Long Island, New York. She graduated in Economics from Princeton University. She received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1979. Whitman began her working career at Procter & Gamble from 1979 to 1981 and then worked for companies like Bain & Company and Walt Disney Company. Meg Whitman accepted the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award for the community of buyers and sellers that make up eBay.