best business people

 1.     Jeff Bezos, Amazon– Jeff Bezos is a pioneer in world of internet commerce, and was instrumental in defining this space that is now defining many aspects of the internet world. It is Jeff Bezos who innovated the concept of “predictive analytics”–recommending products to customers based on search history and buying habits. Whether you like the concept or you hate it, the idea has made online commerce more profit rich and efficient, and is making online shopping a better experience for consumers throughout the

world.

Bio data:

American entrepreneur Jeff Bezos is the founder and chief executive officer of Amazon.com. In 2013, he purchased The Washington Post.

Synopsis

Entrepreneur and e-commerce pioneer Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Bezos had an early love of computers and studied computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University. After graduation, he worked on Wall Street, and in 1990 became the youngest senior vice president at the investment firm D.E. Shaw. Four years later, he quit his lucrative job to open Amazon.com, a virtual bookstore that became one of the internet's biggest success stories. In 2013, Bezos made headlines when he purchased The Washington Post in a $250 million deal.

Early Life and Career

Jeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to a teenage mother, Jacklyn Gise Jorgensen, and his biological father, Ted Jorgensen. Bezos's parents were married less than a year, and when Bezos was four years old his mother married his step-father Mike Bezos, a Cuban immigrant.

As a child, Jeff Bezos showed an early interest in how things work, turning his parents' garage into a laboratory and rigging electrical contraptions around his house. As a teenager, his family moved to Miami where he developed a love for computers and excelled in school, becoming the valedictorian of his class. In high school, he also started his first business, the Dream Institute, an educational summer camp for fourth, fifth and sixth graders.

Bezos pursued his interest in computers at Princeton University, where he graduated summa cum laude in 1986 with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. After graduation, he found work at several firms on Wall Street including Fitel, Bankers Trust, and the investment firm D.E. Shaw where he met his wife Mackenzie and was named the youngest vice president in 1990. While his career in finance was extremely lucrative, Bezos chose to make a risky move into the nascent world of e-commerce. He quit his job in 1994, moved to Seattle and targeted the untapped potential of the internet market by opening an online bookstore.

Pioneering E-Commerce

Bezos set up the office for his fledgling company in his garage where, along with a few employees, he began developing software. They expanded operations into a two-bedroom house, equipped with three Sun Microstations, and eventually developed a test site. After inviting 300 friends to beta test the site, Bezos opened Amazon.com, named after the meandering South American River, on July 16, 1995.The initial success of the company was meteoric. With no press promotion, Amazon.com sold books across the United States and in 45 foreign countries within 30 days. In two months, sales reached $20,000 a week, growing faster than Bezos and his start-up team had envisioned. 

Amazon.com went public in 1997 and many market analysts questioned whether the company could hold its own when traditional retailers launched their own e-commerce sites. Two years later, the start-up not only kept up, but also outpaced competitors, becoming an e-commerce leader.Bezos continued to diversify Amazon’s offerings with the sale of CDs and videos in 1998, and later clothes, electronics, toys and more through major retail partnerships. While many dot.coms of the early '90s went bust, Amazon flourished with yearly sales that jumped from $510,000 in 1995 to over $17 billion in 2011.

In 2007, Amazon.com released the Kindle, a handheld digital book reader that allows users to buy, download, read and store their book selections. That same year, Bezos also set his sights far, far, away, announcing his investment in Blue Origin, a Seattle-based aerospace company that is developing technologies to offer space travel to paying customers.

Bezos then moved Amazon into the tablet marketplace with the unveiling of the Kindle Fire in 2011. The following September, he announced the new Kindle Fire HD, the company's next generation tablet designed to give Apple's iPad a run for its money. "We haven't built the best tablet at a certain price. We have built the best tablet at any price," Bezos said, according to ABC News.

Buying 'The Washington Post'

Bezos made headlines worldwide on August 5, 2013, when he purchased The Washington Post and other publications affiliated with The Washington Post Co., which owns the paper and other entities, for $250 million cash. The deal marks the end of the four-generation reign over The Post Co. by the Graham family, including Donald E. Graham, the company's chairman and chief executive, and his niece, Post publisher Katharine Weymouth.

"The Post could have survived under the company's ownership and been profitable for the foreseeable future," Graham stated, in an effort to explain the transaction. "But we wanted to do more than survive. I'm not saying this guarantees success, but it gives us a much greater chance of success."

In a statement to Post employees on August 5, Bezos wrote: "The values of The Post do not need changing. ...There will, of course, be change at The Post over the coming years. That's essential and would have happened with or without new ownership. The internet is transforming almost every element of the news business: shortening news cycles, eroding long-reliable revenue sources, and enabling new kinds of competition, some of which bear little or no news-gathering costs. There is no map, and charting a path ahead will not be easy. We will need to invent, which means we will need to experiment. Our touchstone will be readers, understanding what they care about—government, local leaders, restaurant openings, scout troops, businesses, charities, governors, sports—and working backwards from there. I'm excited and optimistic about the opportunity for invention."

Recent Projects

In early December 2013, Bezos made headlines when he revealed a new, experimental initiative by Amazon, called "Amazon Prime Air," using drones—remote-controlled machines that can perform an array of human tasks—to provide delivery services to customers. According to Bezos, these drones are able to carry items weighing up to 5 pounds, and are capable of traveling within a 10-mile distance of the company's distribution center. He also stated that Prime Air could become a reality within as little as four or five years.

2.     Anne Mulcahy, Xerox – Anne turned things around when her company faced a financial crisis. Yes, I can directly relate. You can read about some of my adventures at Fishbowl here. Anne never aspired to the role of CEO, but neither did she shy away from the opportunity to lead when elected by the board of Xerox XRX +0.75% in 2001. During her tenure she was required to reduce the company’s workforce by 30% and later eliminated the entire desktop portion of Xerox. For her courageous execution in the face of adversity Chief Executive Magazine named her CEO of the Year in 2008 and U.S. News & World Report named her one of America’s Best Leaders. Forbes acknowledged Anne as one of the world’s most influential women in 2005 and 2009.

Having pulled Xerox out of a near-fatal slump in 2002, Mulcahy, 52, is now looking to get her company back to the top of the tech world. Her ideas: color printing and lucrative consulting services. It's a tough space to exist in, with competitors like HP, Kodak and Dell battling for pieces of the printing, copying and services businesses. To highlight how Xerox has changed, Mulcahy, who took over the top job in 2001, has yanked the company's tagline, "The Document Company," in favor of going solo with the Xerox name.

 A Xerox veteran, she started as a lowly field-sales rep 30 years ago. Working at Xerox is all in the family for Mulcahy. Her husband is a retired Xerox exec, and her older brother now runs the global services group. One of the few elite women to run a top public company, Mulcahy is a coveted choice on corporate boards, serving on the boards of Citigroup and Target.

 Anne M. Mulcahy is chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Xerox Corporation,  Stamford, Conn. She was named  CEO of Xerox on Aug. 1, 2001, and chairman on Jan. 1, 2002.  Mulcahy most recently was president and chief operating officer  of Xerox from May 2000 through

July 2001. Prior to that, she  was president of Xerox's General Markets Operations, which  created and sold products for reseller, dealer and retail channels.  She began her Xerox career as a field sales representative in 1976

and assumed increasingly responsible sales and senior  management positions. From 1992-1995, Mulcahy was vice  president for human resources, responsible  for compensation, benefits, human resource

strategy, labor relations, management  development and employee training.

Mulcahy became chief staff officer in 1997 and corporate senior vice president in 1998.  Prior to that, she served as vice president  and staff officer for Customer Operations,  covering South America and Central America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and China. Mulcahy earned a bachelor of arts degree in English/Journalism from Marymount  College in Tarrytown, N.Y., in 1974. In addition to the Xerox board, she is a member of  the boards of directors of Catalyst, Citigroup Inc., Fuji Xerox Co. Ltd. and Target  Corporation, and is a member of The Business Council.  Mulcahy was born Oct. 21, 1952, in Rockville Centre, N.Y.

3. Brad Smith, Intuit – Intuit is one of the world’s largest and most successful financial software companies. It is the maker of the QuickBooks accounting software we have integrated with our Fishbowl Inventory software. Even as a company of nearly $4B in revenue with a market cap of approximately $16.5B, Intuit INTU +0.85% continues to operate like a collection of startups. Brad has fostered a culture where nearly 8,000 employees are allowed to take risks and to grow by learning from success and failure.

In honor of Entrepreneur Month, I’ve been writing here and at Harvard Business Review with my paired leadership partner Mary Michelle Scott, Fishbowl president, about launching and scaling a company in a high growth phase. We’ve been hitting some hot buttons, particularly in our Forbes article “The Case for Hiring ‘Under Qualified’ Employees,” June 14. The responses have been phenomenal. (216 comments and some 144,000 views. Keep them coming, folks—I’m loving the dialogue.)In that same vein, I’d like to continue discussing the entrepreneurial skills required to run a great company. We’re talking today with Brad Smith, president and CEO of Intuit, one of the world’s largest and most successful financial software companies.

Intuit, of course, is maker of the QuickBooks accounting software we have fully-integrated with our Fishbowl Inventory software, that we offer to midsize companies as a complete business management solution through Fishbowl Enterprise (FBE) software, and that we use to run our own growth company as well.

Intuit is a public company with nearly $4B in total revenue, currently, and a market cap of approximately $16.5B. Even more importantly (in my opinion), Intuit has been consistently ranked one of Fortune’s “Best 100 Companies to Work For” and one of Fortune’s “Most Admired Software Companies” over the past several years. Here’s what Brad says about the importance of entrepreneurialism from the helm of Intuit (which I’ll compare and contrast to the task of running a 100-person growth company such as our own).

David: What entrepreneurial traits of your own and of your company’s have most influenced your company’s path?

Brad: I’ve always valued and encouraged teamwork, and that collaborative spirit of “we” versus “I” is core to Intuit’s success. Innovation has been part of Intuit’s DNA for nearly 30 years. We pride ourselves on two core capabilities that differentiate us and allow us to deliver solutions that truly change people’s financial lives. The first is customer driven innovation, a mindset and methodology that helps us uncover important, unsolved problems. Customers are at the heart of everything we do. We conduct nearly 10,000 hours of follow me homes a year where we observe customers where they live, work and do business – from home offices and coffee shops to rural farms in India. Customer driven innovation was at the core of Intuit’s first product, Quicken, and it continues to guide us as we look to solve new problems in areas like mobile payments. Products like Intuit GoPayment and the IntuitPayment Network are helping small businesses get paid faster, keeping cash flow strong and their business healthy.

The second process, Design for Delight, enables us to create better ways to deliver what’s most important for customers. Design for Delight is grounded in deep customer empathy, going broad with ideas then narrowing with possible solutions and finally, rapid experimentation with customers. These principles were integral in a product we recently launched called Snap Payroll, a free, mobile application that allows small businesses on the go to calculate paychecks in minutes and determine how much to set aside for taxes.

Collaboration, customer driven innovation and Design for Delight, allow us to continually reinvent ourselves to deliver for the future and provide our customers anytime, anywhere access.

David: How does being an entrepreneur at the helm of a very large enterprise differ from entrepreneurial leadership of a small startup or growth company?

Brad: Regardless of whether you are leading a large enterprise or a small team, you need to remove barriers to innovation and get out of the way. At Intuit, we operate like a company of startups. We create and foster a culture where our nearly 8,000 employees worldwide have the courage to take risks and grow by learning from success and failure. Idea Jams and unstructured time give passionate employees opportunities to collaborate on new ideas to solve customer problems. To keep ideas moving and teams nimble, we embrace the “Two-Pizza rule,” making sure product development teams are no larger than two pizzas can feed.

At the end of the day, it’s about empowering individuals to contribute ideas and make an impact, as well as setting goals that challenge employees to step outside their comfort zone. We realize the importance of recognizing employees for their innovative work. Recognition comes in the form of Intuit co-founder Scott Cook’s annual Innovation Awards, patent rewards and the opportunity for employees to showcase their work at Innovation Gallery Walks held throughout the year. The best reward for employees is seeing the profound impact of their work on the lives of our more than 50 million customers.

David: It’s interesting that at a much smaller scale, the approaches you are taking are what we’ve been trying to accomplish at Fishbowl as well. As each new hire begins, as with all employees, we expect them to assume the role of their own business within our business. I call it “Me, Inc.” That perspective accelerates everything they do –from the questions they ask to the programs they propose. The creativity goes through the roof. They are in a position to be creative, to be more efficient, and to find ways to increase revenue and reduce the bottom line. We have no managers; we have leaders who are resources and examples of what we espouse. While I have an open door, I expect individuals to come to me or any leader with several proposed answers to the questions they have. Nine out of ten times, they have the answer and my role is to support them.

We train them not to come and ask me to answer the question, or what I think they should to do. Our “Me, Inc.” approach flavors their experience from the very beginning – and quite frankly, without this approach, our company wouldn’t be where it is today.

It’s very heartening to hear those same messages resonate within a company as large and as successful as Intuit.

So—in conclusion—I would say that a company is never too large or too successful to continue to behave and think 100% as an entrepreneur. Innovation is as critical as ever. It’s safe to say that making a company a great place to work is essential for a successful global company, too. 

4. Howard Schultz, Starbucks – From his upbringing in a poor family in the Bronx to an athletic scholarship and eventually the head of Starbucks SBUX +0.9%, Howard Schultz is a consummate example of courage, hard work, and the ability to achieve the American dream. Even in the glow of his own successes, Howard is also interested in investing in others’ success and continues to invest actively in other business ventures, such as eBay.

Howard Schultz Biography

Activist (1953–)

 Synopsis

Born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 19, 1953, Howard Schultz graduated from Northern Michigan University with a bachelor's degree in communications before becoming director of retail operations and marketing for the Starbucks Coffee Company in 1982. After founding the coffee company Il Giornale, in 1987, he purchased Starbucks and became CEO and chairman of the company. In 2000, Schultz publicly announced that he was resigning as Starbucks's CEO. Eight years later, however, he returned to head the company. In 2012, Starbucks included more than 17,600 stores and its market cap was valued at $35.6 billion.

Early Life and Career

Howard D. Schultz was born in Brooklyn, New York, on July 19, 1953, and moved with his family to the Bayview Housing projects in Canarsie, a neighborhood in southeastern Brooklyn, when he was 3 years old. Schultz was a natural athlete, leading the basketball courts around his home and the football field at school. He made his escape from Canarsie with a football scholarship to Northern Michigan University in 1970.

After graduating from the university with a Bachelor of Science degree in communication in 1975, Schultz found work as an appliance salesman for Hammarplast, a company that sold European coffee makers in the United States. Rising through the ranks to become director of sales, in the early 1980s, Schultz noticed that he was selling more coffee makers to a small operation in Seattle, Washington, known then as the Starbucks Coffee Tea and Spice Company, than to Macy's. "Every month, every quarter, these numbers were going up, even though Starbucks just had a few stores," Schultz later remembered. "And I said, 'I gotta go up to Seattle.'" 

Howard Schultz still distinctly remembers the first time he walked into the original Starbucks in 1981. At that time, Starbucks had only been around for 10 years and didn't exist outside Seattle. The company's original owners, old college buddies Jerry Baldwin and Gordon Bowker and their neighbor, Zev Siegl, had founded Starbucks in 1971. The three friends also came up with the coffee company's ubiquitous mermaid logo.

"When I walked in this store for the first time—I know this sounds really hokey—I knew I was home," Schultz later remembered. "I can't explain it. But I knew I was in a special place, and the product kind of spoke to me." At that time, he added, "I had never had a good cup of coffee. I met the founders of the company, and really heard for the first time the story of great coffee ... I just said, 'God, this is something I've been looking for my whole professional life.'" Little did Schultz know then how fortuitous his introduction to the company would truly be, or that he would have an integral part in creating the modern Starbucks.

 Birth of the Modern Starbucks

A year after meeting with Starbucks' founders, in 1982, Howard Schultz was hired as director of retail operations and marketing for the growing coffee company, which, at the time, only sold coffee beans, not coffee drinks. "My impression of Howard at that time was that he was a fabulous communicator," co-founder Zev Siegl later remembered. "One to one, he still is."

Early on, Schultz set about making his mark on the company while making Starbucks' mission his own. In 1983, while traveling in Milan, Italy, he was struck by the number of coffee bars he encountered. An idea then occurred to him: Starbucks should sell not just coffee beans, but coffee drinks. "I saw something. Not only the romance of coffee, but ... a sense of community. And the connection that people had to coffee—the place and one another," Schultz recalled. "And after a week in Italy, I was so convinced with such unbridled enthusiasm that I couldn't wait to get back to Seattle to talk about the fact that I had seen the future."

Schultz's enthusiasm for opening coffee bars in Starbucks stores, however, wasn't shared by the company's creators. "We said, 'Oh no, that's not for us,'" Siegl remembered. "Throughout the '70s, we served coffee in our store. We even, at one point, had a nice, big espresso machine behind the counter. But were in the bean business." Nevertheless, Schultz was persistent until, finally, the owners let him establish a coffee bar in a new store that was opening in Seattle. It was an instant success, bringing in hundreds of people per day and introducing a whole new language: the "cafe latte"—both the beverage and the word—was introduced to Seattle in 1985.

But the success of the coffee bar demonstrated to the original founders that they didn't want to go in the direction Schultz wanted to take them. They didn't want to get big. Disappointed, Schultz left Starbucks in 1985 to open a coffee bar chain of his own, Il Giornale, which quickly garnered success.

                 Two years later, with the help of investors, Schultz purchased Starbucks, merging Il Giornale with the Seattle company. Subsequently, he became CEO and chairman of the Starbucks (known thereafter as the Starbucks Coffee Company). Schultz had to convince investors that Americans would actually shell out high prices for a beverage that they were used to getting for 50 cents. At the time, most Americans didn't know a high-grade coffee bean from a teaspoon of Nescafé instant coffee. In fact, coffee consumption in the United States had been going down since 1962. 

In 2000, Schultz publicly announced that he was resigning as Starbucks' CEO. Eight years later, however, he returned to head the company. In a 2009 interview with CBS, Schultz said of Starbucks' mission, "We're not in the business of filling bellies, we're in the business of filling souls."

Continued Success

In 2006, Howard Schultz was ranked No. 359 on Forbes magazine's "Forbes 400" list, which presents the 400 richest individuals in the United States. In 2013, he was ranked No. 311 on the same list, as well as No. 931 on Forbes's list of billionaires around the globe.

Today, no one company sells more coffee drinks to more people in more places than Starbucks. By 2012, Starbucks had grown to encompass more than 17,600 stores in 39 countries around the world, and its market capitalization was valued at $35.6 billion. The incredibly popular coffee company reportedly opens a new store every 12 hours and attracts close to 44 million customers per week. According to the company's website, Starbucks has been "committed to ethically sourcing and roasting the highest-quality arabica coffee in the world" since 1971.

Support for Gay Marriage

In March 2013, Schultz made headlines and won wide applause after making a statement in support of the legalization of gay marriage. After a shareholder complained that Starbucks had lost sales due its support for gay marriage (the company had announced its support for a referendum to legalize gay union in the state of Washington), Schultz responded, "Not every decision is an economic decision. Despite the fact that you recite statistics that are narrow in time, we did provide a 38 percent shareholder return over the last year. I don't know how many things you invest in, but I would suspect not many things, companies, products, investments have returned 38 percent over the last 12 months. Having said that, it is not an economic decision to me. The lens in which we are making that decision is through the lens of our people. We employ over 200,000 people in this company, and we want to embrace diversity. Of all kinds." The CEO then added, "If you feel, respectfully, that you can get a higher return than the 38 percent you got last year, it's a free country. You can sell your shares in Starbucks and buy shares in another company. Thank you very much."

Howard Schultz currently resides in Seattle, Washington, with his wife, Sheri (Kersch) Schultz, and two children, Jordan and Addison.

5. Larry Page, Google – Larry Page is another example of a businessperson who can persevere any challenge. Larry and his company have faced much criticism and received ample praise over the years for his company’s actions. But in the midst of the storm, he has never let what others think sway him from pursuing the course for his company that he considers the best.

Larry Page Biography

Inventor, Engineer (1973–)

 Synopsis

Born in Michigan in 1973, Larry Page's parents were both computer experts, so it was no surprise that he studied computer engineering at Stanford University. That's where he met Sergey Brin. Together, Page and Brin developed a search engine that listed results according to the popularity of the pages, calling it "Google." Since launching Google in 1998, the commpany has become the world's most popular search engine, averaging nearly 6 billion searches daily in 2013.

Early Life and Career

Larry Page was born Lawrence Page on March 26, 1973, in East Lansing, Michigan. His father, Carl Page, was a pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence, and his mother taught computer programming. After earning a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from the University of Michigan, Page decided to concentrate on computer engineering at Stanford University, where he met Sergey Brin.

Google Begins

As a research project at Stanford University, Page and Brin created a search engine that listed results according to the popularity of the pages, after concluding that the most popular result would often be the most useful. They called the search engine "Google" after the mathematical term "googol," which refers to the No. 1 followed by 100 zeros, to reflect their mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web.

After raising $1 million from family, friends and other investors, the pair launched the company in 1998. Google has since become the world's most popular search engine, receiving an average of 5.9 billion searches per day in 2013. Headquartered in the heart of California's Silicon Valley, Google held its initial public offering in August 2004, making Page and Brin billionaires.

Recent Years

In 2006, Google purchased the most popular website for user-submitted streaming videos, YouTube, for $1.65 billion in stock.

In September 2013, Page was ranked No. 13 on the "Forbes 400" list of the richest people in America. That October, he was ranked No. 17 on Forbes' 2013 "Most Powerful People" list. Now serving as Google's CEO, Page continues to share responsibility for the company's day-to-day operations with Brin, who now serves as director of special projects for Google, and Eric Schmidt, the company's executive chairman.

6. Tim Cook, Apple – Steve Jobs is a hard act to follow, but thus far, Tim Cook is doing a tremendous job. Rather than attempt to match the consumer-facing innovations Steve Jobs had been known for, Tim Cook is forging into the future with his own new advances, such as Apple’s newest innovative inventory management techniques.

Tim Cook Biography

Business Leader (1960–)

Synopsis

Born in Alabama on November 1, 1960, Tim Cook graduated from Auburn University with a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering in 1982, and went on to earn an M.B.A. from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business in the late '80s. Following a 12-year career at IBM, in 1994, Cook became a chief operating officer (Reseller Division) at Intelligent Electronics. He then worked for Compaq as vice president of corporate materials, procuring and managing product inventory. After six months at Compaq, Cook left his position and took a job at Apple. In August 2011, Cook was named Apple's new CEO, taking over the position for former CEO and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in October 2011 after a years-long battle with cancer.

Younger Years

Tim Cook was born Timothy D. Cook in the small town of Robertsdale, Alabama, on November 1, 1960. The middle of three sons born to father Donald, a shipyard worker, and mother Geraldine, a homemaker, Cook attended Robertsdale High School, and graduated second in his class in 1978. He then enrolled at Auburn University in Alabama, where he graduated in 1982 with a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering, and went on to earn a Master of Business Administration degree from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business in 1988. There, Cook earned the title of Fuqua Scholar—an honor given only to students at the the business school who graduate in the top 10 percent of their class.

Early Career

Fresh out of graduate school, Cook embarked on a career in the field of compter technology: He was hired by IBM, where he moved up the ranks to become the computer corporation's North American Fulfillment director, managing manufacturing and distribution functions for IBM's Personal Computer Company in both North and Latin America.

Following a 12-year career at IBM, in 1994, Cook became a chief operating officer (Reseller Division) at Intelligent Electronics. Afte three years there, he was ready for another move: The Compaq Computer Corporation hired Cook as vice president of corporate materials, entrusting him with procuring and managing the company's product inventory. His time there was short-lived, however: After a six-month stint at Compaq, Cook left for a position at Apple.

Career at Apple

"My most significant discovery so far in my life was the result of one single decision: My decision to join Apple," Cook stated nearly 15 years after joining the corporation, while speaking at Auburn University's commencement ceremony in 2010.

But Cook's decision to join Apple wasn't an easy one: He began working for Apple in early 1998, before the company had developed the likes of the iMac, iPod, iPhone or iPad, and when it was seeing declining profits instead of profit growth. According to Cook, prior to accepting his job at Apple, he was actually dissuaded from taking the job, and was told that the company's future looked very bleak: "While Apple did make Macs, the company had been losing sales for years and was commonly considered to be on the verge of extinction. Only a few months before I'd accepted the job at Apple, Michael Dell, the founder and CEO of Dell Computer, was publicly asked what he would do to fix Apple, and he responded, 'I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders,'" Cook explained to Auburn graduates in 2010.

Soon after Cook came on board, however, things began to look a little brighter at Apple. As the corporation's chief operating officer, Cook was responsible for managing all sales and operations worldwide, including sales activities, and service and support. He was also a leader of the company's Macintosh division and in developing reseller/supplier relationship strategies. Less than a year after Cook his Apple debut, the corporation was reporting profits (fiscal year 1998)—an extraordinary shift from it's fiscal 1997 report showed a net loss of $1 billion from the prior fiscal year.

In August 2011, Cook was named Apple's new CEO, taking over the position for former CEO and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in October 2011 after a years-long battle with cancer. In addition to serving as CEO, Cook sits on the corporation's board of directors.

In May 2014, Apple announced its biggest acquisition to date when it bought Beats Music and Beats Electronics for $3 billion. As part of the deal, Beats co-founders Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine would join Apple in executive roles. In a letter to Apple employees, Cook said, “This afternoon we announced that Apple is acquiring Beats Music and Beats Electronics, two fast-growing businesses which complement our product line and will help extend the Apple ecosystem in the future. Bringing our companies together paves the way for amazing developments which our customers will love.”

Following this in June 2014, at the Worldwide Developers Conference, Cook announced the latest version of the Apple operating system for desktop and mobile, OSX Yosemite.

World Impact and Salary

In November 2011, Cook was named one of Forbes magazine's "World's Most Powerful People." According to an April 2012 article in The New York Times, Cook was the highest-paid CEO among large publicly traded companies in 2012. While his salary at Apple amounts to around $900,000, Cook reportedly brings in several millions of dollars annually due to other forms of compensation, including stock awards and bonuses. In 2011, Cook reportedly made $378 million in total compensation. 

7. Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo – Indra Nooyi, another of Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women, has not only led her company to record financial results but is making strides to move PepsiCo in a healthier direction, leading the courageous charge to shed traditional fast food properties and to replace them with initiatives to supply healthier foods. She is deeply caring and committed as a senior executive. She is a fun-loving executive as well—she played lead guitar for an all-woman rock band in college, loved to play cricket, and is known to sing karaoke and perform at corporate gatherings to this day. Yes, I have been known to relate to her fun-loving spirit as a senior executive as well.

Indra K. Nooyi is the president and chief financial officer of PepsiCo. Best known for its Pepsi soft drinks, the international powerhouse that Nooyi oversees is actually one of the world's largest snack-food companies. It makes and sells dozens of other products, including Doritos-brand chips, the Tropicana juice line, and Quaker Oats cereals. Nooyi is one of the top female executives in the United States, and is also believed to be the highest-ranking woman of Indian heritage in corporate America.

Joined Rock Band

Nooyi was born in Madras, India, in 1955, and was a bit of a rule breaker in her conservative, middle-class world as she grew up. In an era in India where it was considered unseemly for young women to exert themselves, she joined an all-girls' cricket team. She even played guitar in an all-female rock band while studying at Madras Christian College. After earning her undergraduate degree in chemistry, physics, and math, she went on to enroll in the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta. At the time, it was one of just two schools in the country that offered a master's in business administration degree, or M.B.A.

Nooyi's first job after earning her degree was with Tootal, a British textile company. It had had been founded in Manchester, England, in 1799, but had extensive holdings in India. After that, Nooyi was hired as a brand manager at the Bombay offices of Johnson & Johnson, the personal-care products maker. She was given the Stayfree account, which might have proved a major challenge for even an experienced marketing executive. The line had just been introduced on the market in India, and struggled to create an identity with its target customers. "It was a fascinating experience because you couldn't advertise personal protection in India," she recalled in an interview with the Financial Times 's Sarah Murray.

Nooyi began to feel that perhaps she was underprepared for the business world. Determined to study in the United States, she applied to and was accepted by Yale University's Graduate School of Management in New Haven, Connecticut. Much to her surprise, her parents agreed to let her move to America. The year was 1978. "It was unheard of for a good, conservative, south Indian Brahmin girl to do this," she explained to Murray in the Financial Times. "It would make her an absolutely unmarriageable commodity after that."

"Behind my cool logic lies a very emotional person."

Could Not Afford Suit

Nooyi quickly settled into her new life, but struggled to make ends meet over the next two years. Though she received financial aid from Yale, she also had to work as an overnight receptionist to make ends meet. "My whole summer job was done in a sari because I had no money to buy clothes," she told Murray. Even when she went for an interview at the prestigious business-consulting firms that hired business-school students, she wore her sari, since she could not afford a business suit. Recalling that the Graduate School of Management required all first-year students to take—and pass—a course in effective communications, she said in the Financial Times interview that what she learned in it "was invaluable for someone who came from a culture where communication wasn't perhaps the most important aspect of business at least in my time."

Pepsi v. Coke

The rivalry between Pepsi, the flagship product of Indra Nooyi's company, and its Atlanta, Georgia-based competitor, Coca-Cola, is one of corporate America's longest-running marketing battles. In the United States alone, the soft-drink industry is a $60 billion one, with the average American consuming a staggering fifty-three gallons of carbonated soft drinks every year.

The battle between Coke and Pepsi dates back almost as long as each company's history. Both emerged as key players in early decades of the twentieth century, when soft drinks first came on the market in the United States. In the 1920s, Coca-Cola began moving aggressively into overseas markets, and even opened bottling plants near to places where U.S. service personnel were stationed during World War II. Pepsi only moved into international territory in the 1950s, but scored a major coup in 1972 when it inked a deal with the Soviet Union. With this deal, Pepsi became the first Western product ever sold to Soviet consumers.

The battle for market share heated up after 1975, when both companies stepped up their already lavishly financed marketing campaigns to win new customers. Pepsi's standard cola products had a slightly sweeter taste, which prompted one of the biggest corporate-strategy blunders in U.S. business history: in 1985, Coca-Cola launched "New Coke," which had a slightly sweeter formulation. Coke consumers were outraged. The old formula was still available under the name "Coca-Cola Classic," but the New Coke idea was quickly shelved. This incident is often studied by business-school curriculums in the United States and elsewhere, along with many other aspects of what is known as "the cola wars."

Coke is the leader in market share for carbonated colas, but soft drinks remain its core business. Pepsi, on the other hand, began acquiring other businesses in 1965 when it bought the Texas-based Frito-Lay company, and has a larger stake in the food industry.

Nooyi did not earn a second M.B.A. from Yale. Instead, her degree was a master of public and private management, which she finished in 1980. After commencement, she went to work at the Boston Consulting Group, a prestigious consulting firm. For the next six years she worked on a variety of international corporate-strategy projects, and went over to Motorola in 1986 as a senior executive. She remained there for four years, leaving in 1990 to join Asea Brown Boveri Inc. as its head of strategy. ABB, as the company was known, was a $6 billion Swiss-Swedish conglomerate that made industrial equipment and constructed power plants around the world.

Nooyi's skill in helping ABB find its direction in North America came to the attention of Jack Welch, the head of General Electric. He offered her a job in 1994, but so did PepsiCo chief executive officer Wayne Calloway. As she told a writer for Business Week, the two men knew one another, but Calloway made an appealing pitch for Nooyi's talent. He told her, she recalled, that "'Welch is the best CEO I know.... But I have a need for someone like you, and I would make PepsiCo a special place for you.'"

Nooyi chose the soft-drink maker, and became its chief strategist. Soon, she was urging PepsiCo to reshape its brand identity and assets, and became influential in a number of important decisions. She was also a lead negotiator on the high-level deals that followed. The company decided to spin off its restaurant division in 1997, for example, which made its KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell holdings into a separate company. She also looked at the successful plan by Pepsi rival Coca-Cola, which had sold of its bottling operations a decade earlier, and had been rewarded with impressive profit margins on its stock performance. Pepsi followed suit, and the 1999 initial public offering of the Pepsi bottling operations was valued at $2.3 billion. The company kept a large share of stock in it, however.

Pointed Pepsi in the Right Direction

At PepsiCo, Nooyi has been the chief dealmaker for two of its most important acquisitions: she put together the $3.3 billion-dollar-deal for the purchase of the Tropicana orange-juice brand in 1998, and two years later was part of the team that secured Quaker Oats for $14 billion. That became one of the biggest food deals in corporate history, and added a huge range of cereals and snack-food products to the PepsiCo empire. She also helped acquire the edgy beverage maker SoBe for $337 million, and her deal beat the one submitted by Coca-Cola.

Indra Nooyi (left) and other Pepsi-Co and Quaker Oats executives pose with products from both companies. PepsiCo purchased Quaker Oaks in 2001.

AP/Wide World Photo. Reproduced by permission.

For her impressive dealmaking talents, Nooyi was promoted to the job of chief financial officer at PepsiCo in February of 2000. It made her the highest-ranking Indian-born woman among the ranks of corporate America. A year later, she was given the title of president as well, when her longtime colleague, Steven S. Reinemund, advanced to the position of board chair and chief executive officer. Reinemund had said he would only take the job only if Nooyi came onboard as his second in command. "'I can't do it unless I have you with me,'" she recalled him telling her, according to Business Week.

Upon taking over as president and chief financial officer in May of 2001, Nooyi worked to keep the company on track with her vision: "For any part of the day we will have a little snack for you," she told Business Week in 2001. The company sold a dazzling range of snack foods and beverages, from Mountain Dew to Rice-a-Roni, from Captain Crunch cereal to Gatorade-brand sports drinks. It also owned the makers of Doritos-brand snacks and Aquafina bottled water.

One of Corporate America's Top Visionaries

Nooyi's success in the business world landed her on Time magazine's list of "Contenders" for its Global Business Influentials rankings in 2003. Many watchers predict that she will someday head one of the company's divisions, such as Frito-Lay, or its core brand, PepsiCo Beverages North America. In early 2004, there were mentions in the press that Nooyi, who still wears the occasional sari to work, was being considered for the top job at the Gucci Group, but she denied rumors that she had been talking with the Italian luxury-goods giant.

Nooyi serves on the board of trustees at the Yale Corporation, the governing board of Yale University. She lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, not far from PepsiCo's headquarters across the state line in Purchase, New York. At home, she maintains a puja, or traditional Hindu shrine, and once she flew to Pittsburgh after a tough session with Quaker Oats executives to pray at a shrine there to her family's deity. Her predictions that her American graduate education would hamper her marriage prospects proved untrue, for she married an Indian man, Raj, who works as a management consultant. They have two daughters who are nearly a decade apart in ages, and Nooyi occasionally brings her younger child to work. The former rock guitarist is still known to take the stage at company functions to sing. Her job, however, remains a top priority. She watches championship-game replays of the Chicago Bulls to study teamwork concepts, for example, and admitted to Forbes journalist Melanie Wells that she strategizes 24-7 sometimes. "I wake up in the middle of the night," she told the magazine, "and write different versions of PepsiCo on a sheet of paper."

 

8. Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway – He is a deeply conservative trader during the times that everyone around him is moving from one extreme to the other to the tune of huge losses and gains. Warren Buffett is a perfect example of patience, proving that slow and steady generally wins the business race. (Although I continue to press my own desire to spur Fishbowl’s inventory software business to race!)

Warren Buffett Biography

(1930–)

Synopsis

Businessman and investor Warren Buffett was born on August 30,1930, in Omaha, Nebraska. Investing by age 11, Buffett was running a small business at 13. Buffett later started the firm Buffett Partnership in Omaha, with huge success. In 2006, Buffett announced that he would give his entire fortune away to charity (est. $62 bil.), the largest act of charitable giving in United States history.

Early Life

Businessman and investor. Born Warren Edward Buffett on August 30,1930, in Omaha, Nebraska. Buffett's father Howard worked as stockbroker and served as U.S. Congressman. His mother, Leila Stahl Buffett, was a homemaker. Buffett was the second of three children and the only boy.

Buffett demonstrated a knack for financial and business matters early on in his childhood. Friends and acquaintances have said the young boy was a mathematical prodigy, and was able to add large columns of numbers in his head-a talent he still occasionally shows off to friends and business associates.

Warren often visited his father's stockbrokerage shop as a child, and chalked in the stock prices on the blackboard in the office. At 11 years old he made his first investment; he bought three shares of Cities Service Preferred at $38 per share. The stock quickly dropped to only $27, but Buffett held on tenaciously until they reached $40. He sold his shares at a small profit, but regretted the decision when Cities Service shot up to nearly $200 a share. He later cited this experience as an early lesson in patience in investing.

First Entrepreneurial Venture

By the age of 13, Buffett was running his own businesses as a paperboy and selling his own horseracing tip sheet. That same year, he filed his first tax return, claiming his bike as a $35 tax deduction.

In 1942, Buffett's father was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and his family moved to Fredricksburg, Virginia, to be closer to the congressman's new post. Buffett attended Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, D.C., where he continued plotting new ways to make money. During his high school tenure, he and a friend purchased a used pinball machine for $25. They installed it in a Washington, D.C. barbershop and, within a few months, the profits of the machine allowed Buffett and his friend to buy other machines. Buffett owned three machines in three different locations before he sold the business to a War Veteran for $1,200.

Higher Education

Buffett enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania at the age of 16 to study business. He stayed two years, moved to the University of Nebraska to finish up his degree, and emerged from college at age 20 with nearly $10,000 from his childhood businesses.

Buffett attended Columbia University for his advanced degree and in 1956, shortly after graduation, he formed the firm Buffett Partnership in his hometown of Omaha. His investment successes, particularly in buying undervalued companies whose stocks shortly began to rise, made him extremely rich and gained him the sobriquet, "Oracle of Omaha." Other notable career succeses include helping rescue Salomon Brothers from raiders (1987) and taking charge of the New York City house (1992) in the wake of an insider trading scandal.

Record-Breaking Donation

In June 2006, Buffett made an announcement that he would be giving his entire fortune away to charity, committing 85 percent of it to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This donation became the largest act of charitable giving in United States history.

The majority of Buffett's considerable fortune was amassed through Berkshire Hathaway, a company for which he is the largest shareholder and CEO. Once ranked as Forbes' wealthiest man in 2008, his net worth was estimated at roughly $44 billion in 2012.

Now in his eighties, Buffett recently announced that he is battling prostate cancer. He will begin treatment in July 2012 and expects to be able to fulfill his usual responsibilities at Berkshire Hathaway. "I feel great ... and my energy level is 100 percent," Buffett said in a statement.

In Recent Years

In February 2013, Buffett purchased HJ Heinz with private equity group 3G Capital for $28 billion. 3G, a U.S.-Brazilian company, also owns Burger King and a portion of Anheuser-Busch InBev. According to TIME magazine, Buffett has praised Heinz for making "great-tasting products" and for good management over the past several years.

9. Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Group – Anyone who owns more than 400 companies and is worth billions of dollars is clearly doing many things right. I admire Richard Branson’s tenacity, and I admire his personal brand—so much so, that when my paired leadership partner, Mary Michelle Scott, and I recently traveled to Australia with several of our team in our launch of Fishbowl Australia, we made the effort and kept the commitment to fly with Virgin Airlines every step of the way.

Richard Branson Biography

(1950–)

Synopsis

Born on July 18, 1950, in Surrey, England, Richard Branson struggled in school and dropped out at age 16—a decision that ultimately lead to the creation of Virgin Records. His entrepreneurial projects started in the music industry and expanded into other sectors making Branson a billionaire. His Virgin Group holds more than 200 companies, including the recent Virgin Galactic, a space-tourism company. Branson is also known for his adventurous spirit and sporting achievements, including crossing oceans in a hot air balloon.

Early Life

Richard Charles Nicholas Branson was born on July 18, 1950, in Surrey, England. His father, Edward James Branson, worked as a barrister. His mother, Eve Branson, was employed as a flight attendant. Richard, who struggled with dyslexia, had a hard time with educational institutions. He nearly failed out of the all-boys Scaitcliffe School, which he attended until the age of 13. He then transferred to Stowe School, a boarding school in Stowe, Buckinghamshire, England.

Still struggling, Branson dropped out at the age of 16 to start a youth-culture magazine called Student. The publication, run by students, for students, sold $8,000 worth of advertising in its first edition, which was launched in 1966. The first run of 50,000 copies was disseminated for free, after Branson covered the costs with advertising.

By 1969, Branson was living in a London commune, surrounded by the British music and drug scene. It was during this time that Branson had the idea to begin a mail-order record company called Virgin to help fund his magazine efforts. The company performed modestly, but made Branson enough that he was able to expand his business venture, adding a record shop in Oxford Street, London. With the success of the record shop, the high school drop-out was able to build a recording studio in 1972 in Oxfordshire, England.

Virgin Records

His first artist on the Virgin Records label, Mike Oldfield, recorded his single "Tubular Bells" in 1973 with the help of Branson's team. The song was an instant smash, staying on the UK charts for 247 weeks. Using the momentum of Oldfield's success, Branson then signed other aspiring musical groups to label, including the Sex Pistols. Artists such as the Culture Club, the Rolling Stones, and Genesis would follow, helping to make Virgin Music one of the top six record companies in the world.

 Business Expansion

Branson expanded his entrepreneurial efforts yet again, this time to include the travel company the Voyager Group in 1980, the airline Virgin Atlantic in 1984, and a series of Virgin Megastores. But Branson's success was not always predictable. By 1992, Virgin was suddenly struggling to stay financially afloat. The company was sold later that year to THORN EMI for $1 billion.

Branson was crushed by the loss, reportedly crying after the contract was signed, but remained determined to stay in the music business. In 1993, he founded the station Virgin Radio, and several years later he started a second record company, V2. Founded in 1996, V2 now includes artists such as Powder Finger and Tom Jones.

Branson's Virgin Group now holds more than 200 companies in more than 30 countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, Asia, Europe and South Africa. He has expanded his businesses to include a train company, a luxury game preserve, a mobile phone company and a space-tourism company, Virgin Galactic.

Branson is also known for his sporting achievements, notably the record-breaking Atlantic crossing in Virgin Atlantic Challenger II in 1986, and the crossing by hot-air balloon of the Atlantic (1987) and Pacific (1991). He was knighted in 1999 for his contribution to entrepreneurship, and in 2009, he landed at No. 261 on Forbes' "World Billionaires" list with his $2.5 billion in self-made fortune, which includes two private islands.

Virgin Galactic

In recent years, the ever-adventurous Branson has focused much of his attention on his space tourism venture. He partnered with Scaled Composites to form The Spaceship Company, which is currently developing a suborbital spaceplane, and, in April 2013, the project made an impressive leap forward with the test launch of SpaceShipTwo.

Branson was delighted by the success of his spaceship's first test, telling NBC News that "We're absolutely delighted that it broke the sound barrier on its very first flight, and that everything went so smoothly." He expects to be finishing testing the craft by the end of 2013. By April 2013, more than 500 people had bought their tickets for Virgin Galactic's voyages.

Personal Life

Branson is married to his second wife, Joan Templeman, with whom he has two children: Holly and Sam. He currently lives in London, England.

10. Rupert Murdoch, News Corporation – Rupert Murdoch is a self-made and hard driven Australia-born head of an American publishing dynasty, as the founder, chairman and CEO of News Corporation. He continues to work unbelievably hard at an age when most would have retired long ago. In the midst of accusation and scandal he’s needed to find new strength to face the accusation of bribery, corruption and hacking by subsidiary firms. This news is still breaking, as Rupert resigns from the boards of several of the subsidiary companies involved. Regardless of the outcome, the work ethic and sheer tenacity Rupert Murdoch has shown in the face of adversity continues to serve as an example to all.

Rupert Murdoch Biography

Publisher (1931–)

 Synopsis

Rupert Murdoch was born on March 11, 1931, in Melbourne, Australia. His father was a famous war correspondent and newspaper publisher. Murdoch inherited his father's papers, the Sunday Mail and the News, and continued to purchase other media outlets over the years. In the 1970s, he started buying American newspapers. Murdoch branched out into entertainment with the purchase of 20th Century FOX Film Corp. in 1985. He later launched his own cable news channel, FOX News.

Early Life and Career

Keith Rupert Murdoch was born on March 11, 1931, on a small farm about 30 miles south of Melbourne, Australia. Since birth, Murdoch has gone by his middle name, Rupert, the name of his maternal grandfather. His father, Keith Murdoch, was a well-known Australian journalist who owned a number of local and regional newspapers: the Herald in Melbourne, the Courier-Mail in Brisbane, and the News and Sunday Mail.

The family farm was named Cruden Farm, after the Scottish village from which both of Murdoch's parents had emigrated. The house at Cruden Farm was a stone building with colonial pillars, adorned with original paintings, a grand piano and a library of books, situated amongst green expanses of farmland and bordered by Ghost Gum trees. Murdoch's favorite childhood pastime was horseback riding. His mother later described her son's childhood: "I think it was a very normal childhood, not in any way elaborate or an overindulged one. I suppose he was lucky to be brought up in attractive—you could say aesthetic—surroundings."

The son of a well-respected journalist, Murdoch was groomed to enter the world of publishing from a very young age. He remembers, "I was brought up in a publishing home, a newspaper man's home, and was excited by that, I suppose. I saw that life at close range, and after the age of ten or twelve never really considered any other." Murdoch graduated from Geelong Grammar, a prestigious Australian boarding school, in 1949 before crossing the ocean to attend Worcester College at Oxford University in England. According to one of his early biographers, Murdoch was a "a normal, red-blooded college student who had many friends, chased girls, went on the usual drinking binges, engaged in slapdash horseplay, tried at sports and never had enough money, no doubt due to his gambling." Murdoch's fun-loving youthful ways came to an abrupt end when his father suddenly passed away in 1952, leaving his son the owner of his Adelaide newspapers, the News and the Sunday Mail. After preparing himself with a brief apprenticeship under Lord Beaverbrook at the Daily Express in London, in 1953, a 22-year-old Murdoch returned to Australia to take up the reins of his father's papers.

Media Mogul

Immediately upon assuming control of the Sunday Mail and the News, Murdoch immersed himself in all aspects of the papers' daily operations. He wrote headlines, redesigned page layouts and labored in the typesetting and printing rooms. He quickly converted the News into a chronicle of crime, sex and scandal, and while these changes were controversial, the paper's circulation soared. Only three years later, in 1956, Murdoch expanded his operations by purchasing the Perth-based Sunday Times, and revamped it in the sensationalist style of the News. Then, in 1960, Murdoch broke into the lucrative Sydney market by purchasing the struggling afternoon daily, the Mirror, and slowly transforming it into Sydney's best-selling afternoon paper. Encouraged by his success and harboring ambitions of political influence, in 1965 Murdoch founded Australia's first national daily paper, the Australian, which helped to rebuild Murdoch's image as a respectable news publisher.

In the fall of 1968, 37 years old and owner of an Australian news empire valued at $50 million, Murdoch moved to London and purchased the enormously popular Sunday tabloid, The News of the World. One year later, he purchased a struggling daily tabloid, the Sun, once again transformed the paper into a wild success with his formula of reporting heavily on sex, sports and crime. The Sun also attracted readers by including pictures of topless women in its infamous "Page 3" feature.

Murdoch next expanded his news empire to the United States, with the 1973 acquisition of a Texas-based tabloid, the San Antonio News. As he had done in Australia and England, Murdoch quickly set out to expand across the country, founding a national tabloid, the Star, in 1974 and purchasing the New York Post in 1976. In 1979, Murdoch founded News Corporation, commonly referred to as News Corp., as a holding company for his various media properties.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Murdoch acquired news outlets around the globe at a dizzying pace. In the United States, he bought up the Chicago Sun-Times, the Village Voice and New York magazine. In England, he acquired the eminently respectable Times and Sunday Times of London.

It was also during these years that Murdoch began expanding his media empire into television and entertainment. In 1985, he purchased 20th Century FOX Film Corporation as well as several independent television stations and consolidated these companies into FOX, Inc.—which has since become a major American television network. In 1990, he founded STAR TV, a Hong Kong-based television broadcasting company that broadcasts to over 320 million viewers across Asia. Throughout the late 1980s, he purchased several prestigious American and British academic and literary publishing companies and consolidated them into HarperCollins in 1990. Murdoch has also invested in sports; he is a part owner of the Los Angeles Kings NHL franchise, the Los Angeles Lakers NBA franchise and the Staples Center, as well as FOX Sports Radio and FOXSports.com.

Later Career

With the dawn of the new century, Murdoch continued to expand News Corp's holdings to control more and more of the media people view on a daily basis. In 2005, he purchased Intermix Media, the owner of the popular social networking site MySpace.com. Two years later, in 2007, the longtime newspaper mogul made headlines himself with the purchase of Dow Jones, the owner of the Wall Street Journal.

Murdoch has drawn wide criticism for monopolizing control over international media outlets as well as for his conservative political views, which are often reflected in the reporting of Murdoch-controlled outlets such as FOX News Channel. In the 2010 American midterm elections, News Corp donated $1 million each to the Republican Governors Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a group supporting Republican candidates. Critics argued that the owner of major news sources covering the election should not contribute directly to the political campaigns involved.

His empire, however, was dealt a significant blow in 2011. His London tabloid, The News of the World, was caught up in a phone hacking scandal. Several editors and journalists were brought up on charges for illegally accessing the voicemails of some of Britain's leading figures. Rupert himself was called to testify that same year, and he shut down The News of the World. News Corp later paid damages to some of individuals who were hacked.

Despite this scandal, News Corp retains a significant share of virtually all forms of media across the globe. Murdoch owns many of the books and newspapers people read, the television shows and films they watch, the radio stations they listen to, the websites they visit, and the blogs and social networks they create. In 2013, he announced a significant restructuring of his empire. Murdoch has decided to divide his business into two companies—21st Century FOX Inc. and News Corp. This move separates his entertainment holdings from his publishing interests. According to the Los Angeles Times, Murdoch explained that "Both companies will be uniquely positioned to execute on their respective strategic objectives and to lead their industries forward."

Although he could never have imagined the power he would one day yield, this kind of influence was exactly what Murdoch sought as a young publisher building his empire. "I sensed the excitement and the power," he recalls. "Not raw power, but the ability to influence at least the agenda of what was going on." And after six decades working in the media, Murdoch has said that he could not imagine his life any other way. "If you're in the media, particularly newspapers, you are in the thick of all the interesting things that are going on in a community, and I can't imagine any other life that one would want to dedicate oneself to," he said.

Personal Life

Rupert Murdoch married Patricia Booker in 1956. They had a daughter, Prudence, before divorcing in 1965. He married Anna Torv in 1967, and they had four children before eventually divorcing in 1999. Only 17 days after his second divorce, Murdoch married his third wife, Wendi Deng. They have two children.

Murdoch filed for divorce from Deng in June 2013, citing that the "relationship between husband and wife had broken down irretrievably" in court papers. The news of the split came as a surprise to some, but there had some rumors of trouble in the marriage in recent years. The couple has a prenuptial agreement, but many have speculated that there may still be a battle for his billions.