Women Executives: Meg Whitman

Meg Whitman has risen from her first corporate job at Proctor & Gambler to the top of eBay, where she has been president and CEO since 1998. Gaining experience in brand development, Whitman worked her way up to become president and senior vice president of several big companies, including toy company Hasbro and children's shoe company Stride Rite. Whitman is arguably the greatest reason for eBay's success today, transforming the Web site into a multibillion-dollar venture and the most trusted auctioneer on the Web. Read more from her bio at eBay.

In 2001, just as eBay was getting big, Salon profiled Whitman. She was then head of a rare e-commerce venture that had actually survived the Dot-Com Crash and, of course, is now one of the most popular Web sites in the world. Salon describes how Whitman "listened to the auction site's founders and conferred closely with them. Her style-collaborative yet decisive, serious but loose-set the tone for the company." Salon clarifies just what she's done for the company: "although Whitman didn't invent eBay, she did usher it from a start-up to a powerhouse." Another interesting fact from the article: in 2001 eBay's economy was "larger than that of Iceland."

By 2004, Whitman was fit for the rich list, and in 2006, she made the list of Fortune magazine's most powerful women. Read a blurb and see some of the list's other stars.

London's Financial Times spoke to Whitman in 2006, discussing how e-commerce in general is changing to accommodate the mistakes from the Internet's "first round."  In talking about the growth of her company and what defines eBay, Whitman is quick to note the power of the "many-to-many" business strategy, where buyers and sellers get connected with each other. She contrasts this with Amazon's model, which relies on "one to many": Amazon to the user. Whitman says that since the beginning of eBay, its users have been calling the shots, dictating where the company will go. She says they're "our best R&D lab."

CNN's take is a little less optimistic. At the CNN Money Web site we can read a perspective on eBay's past couple of years. Since the beginning of this decade we've seen companies like Google and Yahoo! diversify considerably to accommodate new trends. This was something Whitman herself grasped in her FT interview: eBay doesn't rely on fashion. Its sellers may respond to trends, but there is a lot on offer at eBay that defies trends. Still, CNN's writer Adam Lashinsky sees Whitman as the candidate for "breathing life into eBay 2.0."

Whitman attended Princeton University, is now a trustee of her alma mater, and recently funded the university with a $30 million donation, much of which has gone toward Whitman College, a vast "pseudo-gothic" stone structure housing student dorms. The building is part of a big project that will allow Princeton to increase its undergraduate class size by 10 percent. See some photos at Time magazine's blog, where you'll also find a link to Princeton's press release on the project.

This January, Whitman announced that she is stepping down as the CEO of the company on March 31 of this year. She will be replaced by John Donahoe, who currently manages the auction venture of the company. But Whitman has said she will stay on as a director of the company. BBC reports on the decision in a January 23 article.