Top Women 2014 in Science, Business and Economics
Last year can boldly name the year of women, as well as the great deeds and important decisions they made. At the same time, the heroines who change our world do not always appear in front of us, like the same pop stars, although they occupy high leadership positions. In this list, we decided to talk about women from different professional fields - from business to science - who in 2014 made our world better or worked hard on this task.
Janet yellen
Head of the US Federal Reserve
“The mysterious woman who controls our economy,” was the name given to Janet Yellen in the acclaimed profile of POLITICO magazine, and this is not a figure of speech. Yellen became head of the US Federal Reserve in February of this year as a result of political intrigues in the Democratic Party, and the Fed is the counterpart of the Russian Central Bank, only responsible for the strongest economy in the world and the main financial institution of the United States. Yellen is really mysterious, and, by her streamlined answers, she can bypass all the Q & A with the most desperate opportunists.
It is known that the priority in its economic program is the creation of new jobs, and not the fight against inflation, that her husband is the winner of the Nobel Prize in economics and that it’s better to follow her words and actions than anyone else: at this stage Not only the largest bank in the United States, whose assets on the balance sheet account for a quarter of the country's total GDP ($ 4.5 trillion), but the entire global economy, depends on the actions of this woman. Judging from Yellen’s words, politically, she looks like an absolute socialist: “The degree and continuing growth of inequality in the United States worries me the most. I think it is appropriate to ask whether this trend is compatible with the values that are rooted in our history, among which “Americans have traditionally given equality of opportunity."
Christine Lagarde
Head of the International Monetary Fund
Christine Lagarde became the first woman to manage a financial organization that includes 188 countries. The IMF is a United Nations economic unit headquartered in Washington, theoretically dedicated to the development of international trade and monetary cooperation and lending. In fact, they often lobby for the interests of only the countries with the largest quotas in the fund. Christine Lagarde, a Frenchwoman by birth and former Minister of Finance of France, is criticized as often as the IMF itself. It is enough that the previous managing director of the fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, called her incompetent ("this is just a beautiful facade"), while compatriots nicknamed her "Miss Tactlessness" for offering the French to switch to bicycles if they lack gasoline.
Lagarde came into economics from politics and transferred political habits to a new position, in particular, the habit of speaking as directly as possible and at the same time not saying anything. At the same time he manages huge financial flows (he approved a credit program for Ukraine for 17 billion dollars) and is categorically, incredibly influential, because with one nod it is able to raise or destroy any country, approving or not credit for it. His goal is to reform the fiscal policy, investment in infrastructure and the creation of new jobs. In 2014, Forbes put her in fifth place on the list of the most influential women in the world, where she lost to leading world politicians like Angela Merkel, but ahead of Michelle Obama, Cheryl Sandberg and Hillary Clinton.
Sheryl Sandberg
COO Facebook
For the last two years, Sheryl Sandberg has been on the computer screen. Last year, this was due to the acclaimed bestseller of its authorship "Lean In", in which Sandberg told how to succeed, have time to raise children, become the face of corporate gender equality and get high-ranking fans in the person of Yahoo! Marissa Mayer and singer Beyonce. This year, because of Facebook, where she is on the board of directors. Under her leadership, the company has improved its profits and updated its strategy for mobile devices, including through the acquisition by the company of the messenger WhatsApp.
Sandberg has a huge fortune, earning $ 38 million a year, and is considered Mark Zuckerberg number two, helping the company in the long run. In May of this year, Sandberg joined the Oath of Donation, a philanthropic campaign launched in June 2010 by American billionaires Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. For her charitable needs, Sandberg promised to give at least half of her capital.
Margaret Whitman
CEO of Hewlett-Packard
Whitman in an animated manner called Meg that in the press, that in life, but such a gentle reduction should not be misleading - this is one of the most influential women in the world of technology and the Internet. A graduate of Princeton and the Harvard Business School, Whitman was the CEO and President of eBay for ten years, turning the public around what the Internet business should be, and in fact, redrafted the business - everyone now focuses on her experience, and eBay is still more deals than NASDAQ, and is the best online auction site.
Meg worked as a top manager at Procter & Gamble and Walt Disney, and in 2011 joined Hewlett-Packard as CEO. She is now restarting HP, and on Wall Street are satisfied with the results of its operations - the company's assets have grown by 70% over the year. They say that she is just lucky to “be in the right place at the right time”, but such success is not explained by exceptional luck: Whitman is a classical student with the riskiness of a triple, who is not afraid to lose a little, then to rise sharply.
Elena Serova
cosmonaut
Elena Serova became the first Russian woman in space in 17 years (and the first on the ISS), not to mention the fact that before her only three of our compatriots had been in space. In addition to the obvious merit, enormous responsibility and other factors that make life heavy, Serova skillfully shaves off the dumbest questions about the state of hair that she (like other women-cosmonauts) are consistently asked at every conference - space sexism as it is. Serova was preparing for the flight for seven years, she has two higher educations and is not afraid of anything at all, but she considers the forced parting with her family (daughter and husband) for half a year to be sad, but quite expected, “this is my job”. It sounds painfully familiar.
Anita Sengupta
NASA Super Engineer and Lab Engineer
In a global context, Anita Sengupta is a rocket scientist, and when translated into Russian, her profession combines both meanings of expression: she really is a superhuman, and the truth is in space. In fact, it was her engineering that helped NASA build the Curiosity rover - the rover was created by the Sengupta rover. However, it is very difficult to describe its activities to people who do not work in the structure of NASA - this is atomic physics for the International Space Station. Anita was fascinated by science fiction and now represents those geeks in the classic sense of the word: she quotes Star Trek and with the help of it explains her thesis, loves Doctor Who and Spock and is also an expert in a unique field. Perhaps, Elton John, it is time to rewrite his song - the rocketmen turned into rocketmen and now they put the rovers on without leaving Earth.
Elizabeth Holmes
CEO Theranos
11 years ago, Elizabeth Holmes, then a student of engineering at Stanford, came up with a plaster that monitors changes in the composition of human blood and has a medicinal effect. After she showed it to her professor, he realized that he was sitting in front of him a new Steve Jobs in the world of medicine. Holmes left the university, opened a laboratory and hired staff for the money that her parents set aside for her studies. Now, 11 years later, her company Theranos is estimated at $ 9 billion thanks to Holmes' sensational development - a painless blood test that allows you to test the blood composition for dozens of indicators in a few drops, which makes the method not only more effective, but also several times cheaper.
You can be absolutely sure that Elizabeth Holmes will be, if not yet, one of the most significant figures of this century. Not only because of his intellect, which will completely change the health care system, but also because it shows that even in an era of greed, one can conduct business ethically. “I did something, and we did something, and it changed people's lives. I would rather live a whole life than a life in which I would have everything else, but not this,” she told the journalist in The profile New Yorker.
Safra Katz
Oracle co-CEO
Safra Katz was for a long time the chief financial officer of Oracle, a software giant and the largest supplier of server hardware, but in September of this year it was announced that she had become co-director of the company. Usually, Katz has played on raising Oracle stocks, as a result of which the company announced the largest operating margin in history. Safra is considered one of the highest paid women directors, who, thanks to its incredible skills and knowledge in the field of finance, brought the company billions. There is not a single woman in the world of technology who can make money like this, and this is largely due to her ability to look to the future - thanks to Katz, Oracle now spends $ 5 billion a year on R & D.
Marissa Mayer
President and CEO of Yahoo!
Iron Lady of Silicon Valley, known far beyond the US for a peculiar approach to the conduct of IT business, combining marketing evangelism, rigidity, lack of competition from Google and Apple and billions in spending to absorb startups and enticing specialists to the company. Following the two-year reign of Meyer at Yahoo! the company, of course, shook itself, but it dropped out of the Fortune 500 list, as sales fell by 6%. Among the ambiguous financial decisions of Marissa Mayer, there was one that Yahoo! would supposedly bring. several billion dollars: the company acquired 24% of the shares of Alibaba - the Chinese leader in terms of online sales, which in September this year was listed on the stock exchange.
Melinda gates
philanthropist, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Gates family has changed the world of business not only about how to make money, but also about how to spend it. Melinda Gates, the wife of the creator of Microsoft Bill Gates, before the active charitable activities engaged in sales in the company of her husband, but then focused on philanthropy. At the moment, Melinda is the main benefactor in the world, donating approximately $ 24 billion. These donations are spent on supporting and improving the health care system, overcoming world hunger, on the education system and other good things. The main merit of Melinda Gates is how she made charity more effective, attracting not only new philanthropists, but also showing how to create targeted charitable campaigns and correctly distribute money. This year, she focused on the reproductive health of women in developing countries.