CEO of Pearson PLC

Photo from www.pearson.com

The list is out and the powdered wigs of England must be flipping. Once again Marjorie Scardino ranks #1 on the Fortune International list of top 50 Most Powerful Women in Business. Marjorie Scardino is the first female CEO of a top 100 United Kingdom company and she's not only an American - but a Texan as well! The highest paid publishing executive in all of the U.K. is a former rodeo barrel racer from Texarkana, Texas.

From Texarkana, Texas to London, England? Quite a change of scenery! Actually, Marjorie began life in Flagstaff, Arizona where she was born in 1947. Shortly after, her family moved to Texarkana, Texas where she spent most of her adolescent life. In 1969 she earned her BA in French and psychology from Baylor University and decided to further her studies into law. She attended law school at George Washington University but eventually dropped out to become a journalist.

Her first job in journalism was working for the Associated Press in Charleston, W. Virginia as a dictationist. She quickly rose to the rank of desk editor. An up and coming rookie reporter had turned in his first big feature article to Marjorie to edit. She read it and asked him "Whoever told you that you could write?" His name was Albert Scardino and it somehow sparked a romance between demanding editor and determined reporter. They later moved westward and were married in a San Francisco park. Not surprisingly, they each wrote their own (unedited) wedding vows.

The newly wed Scardinos moved to Albert's childhood neighborhood in Savannah, Georgia in 1978. They started a weekly newspaper called the "Georgia Gazette". Albert's editorials won the paper a Pulitzer Prize in 1984. Marjorie was a reporter for the paper but also maintained her job as a partner in a Savannah law firm because "We had to eat". The paper eventually went out of business and Albert and Marjorie moved again. This time to New York. Albert's Pulitzer Prize made it easy
to join the staff of the New York Times. When an applicant for managing editor of the N. American division of "The Economist" turned down the job, Marjorie was up for consideration. It took some convincing, as they considered her under-qualified and pointed out her failed weekly paper. She convinced them that "you learn a lot more from mistakes you make than when everything goes smoothly." She got the job.

Marjorie spent the next 7 years as head of the New York based Economist operations. In that time circulation skyrocketed from 100,000 to more than 230,000. Over at "The Economist" headquarters in London, they took notice. In 1992 when "The Economist" needed a new worldwide CEO, they offered the position to Marjorie. She held this position for 4 years and in that time, earnings had risen by a whopping 130 percent! Marjorie's reputation and keen business sense was becoming a widespread topic in the publishing world. It still came as a surprise when Pearson PLC successfully recruited her as CEO in 1997.

Pearson PLC is an international media conglomerate based in London with a $3.5 billion per year in revenue. They also own 50 percent of "The Economist". In her first year with Pearson, Marjorie earned $1.7 million. Sixty percent of those earnings were performance-driven bonuses. She decided to redefine the Pearson group and have it more focused on the media industry. This strategy required shedding nearly 3.2 billion in assets. All non-media related properties were sold off, including Madame Tussaud's wax works and Lazard Investment bank. She not only sold off some assets but set out to acquire new ones. A cool $4.7 billion was doled out to acquire Simon and Schuster's educational publishing business. This purchase now gives Pearson 24 percent of the U.S. textbook market. Pearson's stock price more than doubled during Marjorie's first year as CEO.

Her Texas roots have gained her the nickname of Corporate Cowgirl but she finds herself at home now in Knightsbridge, England where she lives with her husband and two sons. I discovered an interesting bit of trivia regarding her youngest son, Hal. He was the star of the 1995 movie "Indian In the Cupboard". She also has another son and one daughter. Her husband Albert continues to write op-ed pieces and lectures occasionally but has become an accomplished house husband since moving to England.