4 Women Doing Phenomenal Things
A week ago, I was at the water dispenser refreshing the depleted 20-liter can when a colleague stopped me just as I was about to lift the can off the ground. I lift three times the weight of that small can, and so I immediately asked her why she thought it wrong.
Her response, “Try not to emasculate men. Leave the heavy lifting to them.” See, I am the stubborn kind and while she waited for a male colleague to come from wherever and rescue her, a damsel in distress, I refreshed the can, refilled my water bottle and went back to work.
Later that day when discussing the world’s most ridiculous spousal support payments, she would bring up the topic and several of our colleagues – male and female – would agree that the heavy lifting was best left to the men. My response, “if we can run for the highest office on the land, then we sure can lift a 20-little bottle off the ground, can’t we?”
Here is a list of women doing amazing things.
Mary Barra’s Boardroom
General Motors has one of the ‘baddest’ CEOs around. Under Mary Barra’s reign, the company has managed to beat Tesla to the curb by launching the Chevrolet Bolt EV, which has a better battery power and set its eyes on a driverless future. Who would have thought a woman would do so well in what was traditionally thought to be a man’s world?
Indra Nooyi – How do you like your Pepsi?
Indra Nooyi’s time at Pepsi is not over – not by a long shot after the company’s profits went up by 16%. While most people are moving towards healthier drinks and ditching soda, this superwoman and her team found ways to diversify the company’s product catalogue to compete purposely. Clearly, she is doing something right.
Edna Feeds the Hungry
They say there is no force like that of a woman determined to rise. They also say that a woman hardly forgets her origin. As a young, impoverished girl growing up in Kenya at a time when educating the girl child was not prioritized, Edna Ogwangi’s mother had a different vision. She took her little girl to school against all odds.
Food for kids at the school was provided by UNICEF and other organizations from the US and Edna decided at an early age that she would someday go to the source of the food – the US – so she could send back as much food as possible to feed hungry school-going children back home. Years later, she made this dream come true and thanks to her residence, some impoverished children get a meal everyday so they can go to school and improve their lives.
Abigail Johnson Knows her Stocks
When Abigail Johnson took over from her father as President and CEO of Fidelity Investments, the firm doing okay but suffering from a worrisome season of equity mutual funds underperformance. She shook things up a little to allow customers to track earnings from Bitcoin, effectively leading to Fidelity’s revenue report of $15.9 billion in 2016. It can only get better.
These are only a very small representation of what women can do. If my peers – albeit much older – are running fortune 500 companies, then I can lift a 20lb bottle off the ground all by myself, thank you very much.