15 Women Led By Marissa Mayer In Fortune’s List Of 40 Under 40

Fifteen powerful and  influential women have made it to the Fortune’s list of “40 Under 40” compilation that lists individuals who have managed to grow an idea into a profitable business.

The list comprises of entrepreneurs, managers, founders, and professionals aged 40 years and less, the 2014 “40 Under 40” list include:  Marissa Mayer, Elizabeth Holmes, Emily White, Liv Garfield, Megan Ellison, Julie Smolyansky, and others.

What happened if we pushed ourselves to go for greatness, like Marissa Mayer and Elizabeth Holmes did?

1. Marissa Mayer
Age: May 30, 1975 (age 39)
President and CEO of Yahoo!

Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Marissa Mayer:

1. Former Google high flyer turned Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer originally wanted to be a pediatric neurosurgeon.

2. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stanford University. She majored in symbolic systems after being unsatisfied with pre-med.

3. She was Google’s first female engineer and its 20th employee when she joined that company in 1999.

4. On her first day at Google, Mayer went home at 3 a.m.

5. As a programmer during the first 2 years at Google, she logged 100-hour work weeks, she pulled 250 all-nighters in her first five years at Google.

6. She dated Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page in the early 2000s.

7. She studied ballet and captain of the pompom squad.

8. Mayer climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa, in 2009.

9. Mayer was the first person to become CEO of a Fortune 500 company while pregnant

10. Jawbone CEO and co-founder Hosain Rahman, who has also made the 40 Under 40, was her dorm-mate and friend in college.

11. Mayer’s husband Zach Bogue has an investment fund called Data Collective, he revealed

12. She has been on the 40 Under 40 list 5 years in a row.

13. The minimalist home page of Google.com (a single search bar in the center) is said to be the brainchild of Mayer.

2. Elizabeth Holmes
Age: February 3, 1984 (age 30)
Founder and CEO of Theranos.

Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Elizabeth Holmes:

1. Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford University.

2. She alearned Mandarin as a child.

3. While a teenager living in China, Holmes sold C++ compilers to local universities.

4. She’s a vegan and doesn’t drink any coffee.

5. she starts her day with a green juice (and continues to drink them throughout the day)

6. She wears the same outfit every day.

7. She spent a summer working at a genome lab in Singapore

8. The 9-year-old Holmes wrote a letter to her father Christian Holmes IV, stating that what she wanted out of life was “to discover something new, something mankind didn’t know was possible to do”.

9. Her great grandfather was Christian Holmes, a WWI veteran and surgeon after whom a hospital at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center is named.

10. Holmes simply plopped herself down in the office of her chemical engineering professor (at Stanford), Channing Robertson, and said, “Let’s start a company.”

3. Emily White
Age:  36
Chief Operations Officer of Snapchat

Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Snapchat COO, Emily White:

1. She was a protégé of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who brought her over to Facebook.

2. Emily’s a runner.

3. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt University.

4. She’s a board member of  Lululemon, a public athletic apparel company.

5. Emily went from at Google, Inc (from 2001 to 2010) to Facebook to Snapchat.

6. She was Senior Director, Business Operations at Instagram.

7. She helped create Snapchat’s new “story” feature.

Liv Garfield, Chief Executive, Severn Trent (Image: PA)

4. Liv Garfield
Age: 39
Chief Executive of Severn Trent

Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Severn Trent’s CEO Liv Garfield:

1. Garfield is the youngest ever female CEO on the FTSE 100 chief executives in the UK.

2. She is also one of just five women CEO on the FTSE 100.

3. Fortune magazine named Yorskhire-born Garfield the 14th Most Powerful Women in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

4. Her first job was working at a fried chicken stand.

5. Olivia (Liv) worked for six years with the management consultancy, Accenture.

6. During school holidays she would help her parents run their project management business.

7. She roots for the Premier League’s Everton Football Club, She told the UK news agency: ‘I said for my entire childhood that I wanted to be the Everton manager, so that was my absolute ambition.

8. From the age of 5, Liv would travel every weekend with her dad to the Everton match – even though her family lived 90 miles away in Harrogate.

9. Garfield was rejected for entry-level jobs at Unilever and Procter & Gamble on the same day.

10. The mother-of-two, Liv tries to never go to sleep with more than 15 emails in her inbox.

11. Her go-to gadget other than her phone is her hair dryer.

12. Definitely not a time-waster, Garfield cannot abide people who faff.

13. She read German and French at Cambridge, where she met her future husband, Morgan.

14. She is also Non-executive director Tesco Plc.

15. She did admit, her worst decision ever was buying a sports car, only to discover that she was pregnant.

5. Megan Ellison
Age: January 31, 1986 (age 28)
Producer and Founder of Annapurna Films

Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Annapurna Film Founder Megan Ellison:

1. She is daughter of billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison.

2. She drives a 1989 Aston Martin.

3. Last year, Megan became the very first-ever female producer to have 2 films nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award in the same year.

4. Megan likes to wear rock tees of bands like AC/DC

5. During the filming of Zero Dark Thirty, Megan became very close with actress Jessica Chastain.

6. Her company Annapurna Film (named after a section in the Himalayas she hiked in 2006) best known for films like, Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Her (2013), and American Hustle (2013).

7. In 2014, TIME magazine placed Megan in its list of “100 Most Influential People in the World”

8. Her brother David Ellison is also a film producer and CEO of Skydance Productions.

9. She is openly gay and is currently in a relationship with Robyn Shapiro.

6. Julie Smolyansky
Age: 39
CEO and President of Lifeway Foods

Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Julie Smolyansky:

1. Julie got her nose pierced in 2011, in part to rebel against the idea of what a typical CEO should look like.

2. Her workplace pet peeve is when someone says “it’s not my job”.

3. She gets her best ideas during 3-4 hour long runs once a week.

4. Julie roots for the Chicago Cubs.

5. Julie started a nonprofit, Test400k, to end the backlog of untested rape kits.

7. Delphine Arnault
Age: 39
EVP of Louis Vuitton, LVMH

Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Delphine Arnault:

1. She spent 3 years of her childhood in New Rochelle, NY

2. She worked at Dior for 12 years

3. She has a 2-year-old daughter Elisa

4. The LSE grad and one-time McKinsey consultant is an art collector.

5. Delphine has been on LVMH’s board since 2003, when she was in her 20s.

6. Delphine father, Bernard Arnault, is France’s richest man and the head of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods company.

8. Rebecca Minkoff
Age: 33
Co-founder and creative director of Rebecca Minkoff

Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Rebecca Minkoff:

1. Rebecca daughter is named Bowie Lou (nickname: Gouda)

2. Rebecca owns a dining room set bought by her mother at a yard sale.

3. Minkoff became popular by designing handbags like the “Morning After Bag”

4. Rebecca co-founded a fashion line with her brother Uri in 2005.

9. Vijaya Gadde
Age: 39
General counsel of Twitter

Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Vijaya Gadde:

1. Vijaya loves the show “The Walking Dead”.

2. Vijaya is graduate of Cornell undergrad and NYU’s law school.

3. She loves playing poker.

4. A standing joke at Twitter is that Vijaya has a really intense “work face.” People think she’s annoyed when she’s just very focused.

5. She’s a big Kansas Jayhawks fan.

6. She worked at Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

7. She is the only woman on Twitter’s executive team.

10. Sophia Amoruso
Age: 30
Founder and CEO of Nasty Gal

Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Sophia Amoruso:

1. One of her favorite sports teams is the Harlem Globetrotters

1. She picks her nose

3. Her guilty pleasure is pizza

4. Her favorite advice she gives teenage girls is to shave their legs

5. Amoruso has a Rapunzel-esque balcony off her office.

11. Hannah Minghella
Age: 35
President of production of Columbia Pictures

12. Ivanka Trump
Age: 32
Executive vice president, development and acquisitions; Founder and CEO of The Trump Organziation; Ivanka Trump Apparel and Accessories

13. Sarah Kauss
Age: 39
Founder and CEO of S’well

14. Alexa von Tobel
Age: 31
Founder and CEO of LearnVest

15. Ellen MacArthur
Age: 38
Founder of Ellen MacArthur Foundation

This report/news/ranking/statistics has been prepared only for general guidance on matters of interest and does not constitute professional advice. You should not act upon the information contained in this publication without obtaining specific professional advice. No representation or warranty (express or implied) is given as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this publication, and, to the extent permitted by law, CEOWORLD magazine does not accept or assume any liability, responsibility or duty of care for any consequences of you or anyone else acting, or refraining to act, in reliance on the information contained in this publication or for any decision based on it.

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