Women CEOs Path to the Top

Go to an Ivy League school and an elite MBA program, and grab a job at McKinsey or Bain or Goldman and you have completed the requirements to become CEO one day.

Not so fast. At least, not if the experiences of current women CEOs are a guide.

A look at the backgrounds of women now leading Fortune 500 companies—all 24 of them— shows there is little truth in that often repeated advice. After examining the education and career histories of the CEOs, Sarah Dillard, CEPO of SPD Advisory, and Vanessa Lipschitz of the Jacobsen Family Foundation concluded that women are far more likely to win those jobs through a steady climb to the top, no matter where they started.

As for the conventional wisdom, here are the facts that debunk it:

• The College: Only one women had an Ivy League degree—Meg Whitman. (Of the men, only 4% had Ivy League degrees as well).
• The MBA: Only 25% of the women and 16% of the men had MBA’s from a top-ten school.
• The Consulting Gig: Only three of current CEPS had a consulting or banking job right after college.

About 20% of the current CEOs had their first jobs at the companies they now run. More than 70% had spent more than 10 years their current companies. Far from jumping from opportunity to opportunity, these women were much more likely to rise through the ranks of a single company. It makes sense that people who stay with one company over long stretches would build the internal support they need to snag and succeed at a top job.

How does that compare to their male counterparts? The median stint for women CEOs was 23 years spent at a single company in one stretch before becoming the CEO, compared to 15 for men.

While it is true that the world for work is always evolving, the research offers a reminder of both the circumstances of women in corporate life and that success doesn’t follow a formula.