Editor’s Note: Every week, Bizwomen offers some insight on the women who are likely to make headlines over the next seven days. It’s a list of women we will be watching, and we think you should be watching them, too. This week, we’re mixing things up, offering a look back at the women who have been on our radar all year long.
When business-minded historians look back on 2014, they may just hail it as the year top-level women tackled massive corporate turnarounds.
We’ve got Mary Barra, CEO of GM. Then there’s Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and HP exec Meg Whitman. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is making major changes at the online video giant, and Fortune’s “most powerful woman,” IBM’s Ginni Rometty, is trying to take a hardware-centric business to the cloud.
But they aren’t the only women we’ve watched this year. Jill Abramson was fired from her job at the New York Times and is now looking to transform the way great stories get written. Mylan CEO Heather Bresch dominated the conversation on inversions, and Michele Roberts — a (renowned) trial attorney with no background in sports — became the first woman to lead the NBA Players Association.
Here’s a look back at some of the women who caught our eye in 2014 (we’re guessing we’ll hear a lot from them in 2015, too):
General Motors CEO Mary Barra: Who has had a more eventful year than Mary Barra? She took the reigns of GM two weeks before her phone rang with devastating news — the company had a crisis on its hands that would later lead to the recall of 2.6 million vehicles. The following months were filled with public apologies, c ongressional hearings, media engagements and more bad news as the death toll from the faulty ignition switches continued to increase. Her first year is behind her, and experts say Barra has handled the situation well. What’s coming her way in 2015? Barra is determined to change the automaker’s culture.
Ginni Rometty: She topped Fortune’s list of “Most Powerful Women” this year, so yeah, we had our eyes on her. Rometty has had one of those storybook careers, starting at IBM in 1981 as an engineer and working her way through the ranks to run the whole thing. IBM is an oldie but a goodie in the tech space, still providing tech services to much of corporate America while actively exploring how it can capitalize on the world of cloud computing. Last year, its cloud business grew 69 percent, and IBM has made big investments in the hopes of growing that business even more. How big is big? Try $2 billion spent on one acquisition alone. “I feel very good about the direction and how we’ve crystallized it,” Rometty told the New York Times earlier this year. “We are making progress, and we just need to keep moving with speed.”
Julia Pierson: The first woman to oversee the Secret Service, Pierson resigned this year in the wake of multiple security breaches. Under her watch, a man armed with a gun rode on an elevator with the president in September (nothing happened but still a big oops). Not to mention the intruder who hopped the White House fence and made it way too far into the president’s home. Congress wasn’t thrilled about any of this and interrogated Pierson, who seemed to lack the outrage and apologetic manner they were hoping for. She walked away the day after she faced Congress.
Jill Abramson: The first woman to ever serve as the executive editor of The New York Times was fired this past spring. And we still aren’t sure why. Shortly after she was fired, (she prefers the term “fired” to “let go”), she spoke to Wake Forest University‘s graduating class about resilience and announced she was not getting rid of her “T” tattoo for the Times. Abramson is now teaching creative non-fiction writing at Harvard and has plans for a journalism venture that would pay big bucks for quality writing.
Mo’ne Davis: Not too many 13-year-olds have written their own memoirs. But Mo’ne Davis is scribing her story after she became the first girl ever to throw a shutout in the Little League World Series. That was back in the summer, but the world is still impressed with Davis’ arm. The Wall Street Journal called Davis one of the best “sports stories of the summer,” and fans crowded around the field to watch her games.
Malala Yousafzai: This young woman made headlines around the globe after she became the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize, at just 17 years old. In 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head by the Taliban. Since then, she has become an international phenomenon and human rights activist with a global platform. She is on a mission to change the world and already has increased awareness about the need to educate girls worldwide and about life under Taliban rule. She’s also penned a best-seller: her memoir, “I Am Malala.”
Michele Roberts: Before taking the top job at the NBA players’ union, Roberts had to address the “the girl question”— i.e. Could a female trial attorney, with no background in sports or labor relations, cut it as a negotiator for hundreds of millionaire athletes who are, oh yeah, male? Well, in little more than three months, Roberts has effectively stormed the court. She has spoken out about the NBA’s salary cap ( which she calls “incredibly un-American”), started forging relationships with agents and is itching for her next fight: “Don’t start talking about how the players make too much money. The owners make plenty of money; we could only hope to make as much money as the owners make. That’s the real narrative and the one I’m going to fight to get out there,” she told espnW.
Debbie Sterling: At the start of 2014, the co-founder and CEO of GoldieBlox, a company that makes engineering toys for girls, celebrated her first-ever Super Bowl commercial. Nine months later, her company had a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Then, she went after Barbie. In the process, Sterling has become a poster child for the push to get more girls into STEM — part of a larger effort to help women get a stronger foothold in those careers. Given all that, we can’t wait to see what she has in store for 2015.
Marissa Mayer: The Yahoo CEO has made our list of women to watch more times than we can count — and with good reason. Her turnaround plan for the company has been called into question far and wide. She’s made numerous and costly acquisitions that have yet to produce tangible results. Some have even pushed Yahoo to cut its losses and merge with AOL. But then there was the Alibaba IPO, which left the company with billions to play with. And Mayer promised that at least some of that influx would go back to the shareholders. Another sign of light at the end of the long, dark, turnaround tunnel: Yahoo is poised to eclipse Twitter next year in mobile advertising revenue.
Megan Smith: She probably already had one of the coolest jobs in the country — vice president of Google X, a quasi-secret facility where futuristic projects such as drone delivery services, cars that drive themselves and glucose-monitoring contact lenses are developed — before the president came calling. But his offer was pretty good, too: He asked Smith to become chief technology officer for the whole country. In a year when “women in tech” became a bona fide buzzword, worthy of its own hashtag and countless headlines, Smith came to serve as a symbol — that women could rise to the very top of the tech world and that the leader of the free world was a fan of the idea. And if they’re still looking to fill her old job at Google, well, we might be interested.
Susan Wojcicki: Sure, she’s top of mind now because of her empowering op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, pushing for increased access to paid maternity leave for women in the U.S. But she’s also orchestrating massive changes at YouTube. The world’s largest online video website has launched a subscription music service and is reportedly considering the launch of an ad-free, subscription model for videos, too — a development she has said will happen in the “near-term.” All this in her first year on the job — much of which has been spent pregnant with her fifth child.
Meg Whitman: It’s hard work turning around a Silicon Valley icon. For Whitman, that has meant pushing forward with tens of thousands of layoffs and splitting her company in two, with one business focused on PCs and printers and the other specializing in corporate hardware and services. That last move represents a sea change for Whitman, who reportedly resisted the idea of splitting HP for three years after she became the company’s chief executive. Now she will spent the next year dividing the company, so it’s full effect won’t be felt any time soon. What is safe to say: 2015 will be an exciting one for Whitman and HP.
Heather Bresch: The CEO of pharmaceutical giant Mylan put a face on one of the big business stories of the year: inversions. In a nutshell, Bresch decided it was better for her business tax-wise if her company renounced its American citizenship in favor of incorporating overseas. The president isn’t a big fan of this trend. Neither is Bresch’s father, a senator from West Virginia. But her company isn’t alone: Dozens are making similar moves. Even Burger King. And for Bresch, that offers proof that the U.S. has a big corporate tax problem. “Someone needs to get serious about fixing the tax code,” she has said.
Susan Cameron: At this time last year, Susan Cameron had her feet firmly planted in retirement. Come May, she was back in her old job, running the No. 2 tobacco maker in the U.S., Reynolds American. That was enough to grab headlines. Then Cameron took things one step further: spearheading what has been hailed as the largest deal ever led by a woman when Reynolds American acquired Lorillard Inc. for $27.4 billion. And Lorillard’s CEO, Murray Kessler, has said Cameron’s involvement helped make for “a very compelling transaction.” We’re guessing that means she’ll stick around for some time, but whenever she does decide to give retirement another go, she’ll leave some big shoes behind.
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