For decades intelligent, ambitious, business minded women have had their careers stunted by the boys’ club cooperate glass ceiling that exists in companies all across, not just the United States, but across the globe. Women have had to take a backseat to men even though they have had the same education, training, and drive as their male counterparts. Women have been bashing their heads against the glass ceiling trying to gain access to the boardrooms and CEO offices of cooperate America with the end result being the concussions they have sustained for all their hard work and dedication.
It has taken the persistence and hard work of a few pioneer women to finally begin to crack this glass ceiling and ultimately shatter it to pieces, so that other women can follow in their footsteps and begin the ascent to the top of the corporate ladder. Andrea Jung is one of these women. She has made her mark in today’s corporate environment as an influential leader, philanthropist, and innovator. She is a role model for all women, regardless of age, country of origin, or income level. She has taken the glass out of that ceiling and reached down through it to help lift other women up.
Ms. Jung was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1959. Her immediate family consisted of her mother, father, brother, and grandmother. Her parents were immigrants and both came from different countries. Her mother was from Shanghai and her father was from Hong Kong. Both parents were college graduates and therefore placed a strong emphasis on education to their children. Her father was an architect with a Master’s Degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her mother was a chemical engineer. The family moved from Canada to the United States because they wanted the best education for their children.
They settled in Wellesley, Massachusetts where both Andrea and her brother did exceptionally well during grade school through high school. Ms. Jung has spoken publicly many times about the role her parents played during her years as a child and how they taught her the importance of hard work, dedication in achieving one’s goals, and to not be afraid to go after what is important to you. In fact, it was important to her father that she not be raised in the traditional thinking of their heritage, which dictates that women are inferior to men.
He felt this type of thinking would limit her in a career in the United States (Halpern). She was taught at an early age to work for what she wanted and this philosophy has served her well. As a young child she told her mom that she wanted a pack of colored pencils, and her mother told her that if she worked hard during the school semester and earned all A’s then she would buy the pack of colored pencils for her. Andrea, really wanting those colored pencils, achieved her goal of making all A’s. This laid the foundation for the years to come. Andrea graduated high school at the top of her class.
She also served on the student council as secretary and then class president her senior year. She took classes in foreign language and become proficient in Mandarin (Halpern). Following high school, she attended Princeton University. In 1979 she graduated from Princeton, magna cum laude, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature (Encyclopedia of World Biography). After college, Andrea took a job in retail at Bloomingdales as part of their manager in training program. Her intention was to complete the training program and then go on to law school.
This decision stunned her family because they felt this detour into the world of retail would not be a wise or lucrative career choice for their daughter (Encyclopedia of World Biography). She spent the next eight years working at Bloomingdales, where she moved up through the ranks and eventually became a part of the leadership of the marketing department. Marketing would turn out to be her niche. Andrea met her husband, Michael Gould, during her time at Bloomingdales. He was the current CEO at the time. They were married in 1993. After eight years, she left Bloomingdales to work for I.
Magnin where she became the senior vice president while still in her late twenties. Her next career move took her to Neiman Marcus where she was in charge of their entire women’s apparel line. She achieved this high ranking position by the age of thirty two (Halpern). In 1994 her world would change. While working for I. Magnum she spent much of her time commuting to and from her job to home and she decided she wanted less of a commute and more time and home. She needed a change. She took a positon as a consultant with Avon. At that time Avon was not faring well and was struggling to stay current in the changing market place.
The company had been showing revenue losses for several years and needed a fresh prospective in order to save it. The executives were so impressed with the progress and results Andrea was able to make during her first year as a consultant with the company that they offered her the position of president of product marketing group for U. S operations (Encyclopedia of World Biography). She was given the title along with the enormous task of revamping the tired old company that many people considered to be antiquated and old fashion. Her task was to make Avon appealing and relevant to consumers (Halpern).
Jung took on this task by being decisive and unafraid to make drastic, and sometimes unpopular changes. One of her first moves in this new position was to fire the advertising company and start over with a new image and ad campaign. She was trying to separate Avon from the old image of the Avon lady that grandmas would buy their lipstick from, to something more hip, fresh, and modern. She cut the product catalog in half in order to eliminate products that were only available in certain regions and then she replace them with products that were available to all markets, including global markets.
This change helped to provide consistency among the sales representatives that were the backbone of the company. She changed the Avon slogan to “just another Avon lady” in an attempt to rebrand the company and appeal to the younger consumers (Encyclopedia of World Biography). The CEO of Avon at that time was James E. Preston and he took note of Jung’s accomplishments and soon took her under his wing. She began presenting ideas and initiatives to the board members under his recommendation, this helped her to become better positioned within the company. Within only three short years, Andrea was given the role of head of global marketing.
She was only thirty seven years old at the time (Halpern). When Preston stepped down as CEO of Avon, this left a vacancy that Jung wanted to fill. Unfortunately, to her disappointment, she was not chosen for the position. In an interview that aired on PBS, Jung spoke about that time in her life and she described it as a crossroads in which she had two choices. She could either chose to walk away and leave the company to pursue different avenues or she could stay with Avon and commit to fully supporting the new CEO and remain with a company she loved and felt passionate about.
She chose to stay and remain dedicated to the company and support its new leader. She said this decision was one of the best things she could have done in her career (Makers). In only one year’s time, Charles R. Perrin, the newly appointed CEO that Jung chose to stay and support resigned his position with Avon. This was following a year in which the company’s stocks and shares decreased by fifty percent. Following his resignation, Andrea Jung was offered the CEO position she was previously denied and she became the first female CEO of Avon (Halpern).
Jung took over the helm of Avon in the mist of falling stock prices and continued decreases in sales after Perrin’s resignation. She was once again charged with the task of turning Avon around, but this time not just the marketing departments. Her first task was to try and find a way of keeping the sales representatives, who were on the front lines selling the products, happy and launch a new phase of selling which included storefront kiosk and online stores. This was not an easy task because the sales representatives resented the kiosk and online stores because they felt it would take away from their sales revenues.
Avon did not want to alienate its individual sales people and needed to come up with a compromise that would please them and also increase sales by implementing the other two methods (Encyclopedia of World Biography). Jung devised solutions to both the online and kiosk issues that were fair and profitable to both the company and the sales representatives. In the matter of the storefront kiosk, the company offered the sales representatives the option to buy the kiosk as a franchise, this helped to increase the sales representatives’ revenue potential and helped Avon to reach out to a new customer base.
The issue surrounding implementing a web based store upset the reps because they felt that this too would take customers and income away from them. The Avon catalogs had a website printed on their catalogs that customers could go to purchase items, but the sales reps would typically cover this up with their labels that had their personal contact information on it. Jung’s response to this was to change the website and include a new option on the homepage that asked if you have an Avon representative and if so would the customer like to purchase their online items from them personal rep.
The customer could then find their rep from a list and that rep would get the sale. In order to make this more appealing to the reps, Jung offered the reps twenty-five percent commission for direct mail home delivery and fifty percent commission if the rep delivered the items to the customers home themselves. This new program was a win/ win situation for the reps and Jung. It helped the representatives reach a new customer base and gave them increased income potential. It gave Jung the professional credibility and gained trust with her sales representatives in the field (Halpern).
As CEO Jung revamped and modernized a flailing door to door cosmetic company. She did this by adding new products, adding new markets, and updating outdated business practices. She built relationships with all levels of employees and did not discount their opinions or ideas in order to achieve her agenda. She is credited with saving Avon and making it a fortune 500 company that is relevant in the global market. In her first five years as CEO of Avon, profits nearly tripled (Encyclopedia of World Biography).
She was able to entice celebrities such as Serena and Venus Williams, Reese Witherspoon, Fergie, Beyonce, and Jon Bon Jovi, to endorse Avon products. She helped to start the Avon Foundation for Women which helps to finance breast cancer support, combat domestic violence, finance scholarship programs for sales representatives, and contributed to the Global Believe Fund. In 2011 she donated her entire after tax long term bonus, which equaled $5,362,500. 00 to the Avon Foundation for Women (Casserly). In 2012, Jung stepped down as CEO of Avon amid falling sales and stocks.
She did however remain on the board of directors for the company. She has held positions on several boards during her career including General Electric, Apple, and the non-profit organization New York Presbyterian Hospital and Catalyst. She was honored with the Clinton Global Citizen Award which recognizes forward thinking leaders who help solve global challenges. She is annually ranked among Fortune Magazines “50 Most Powerful Women in Business” and in 2011 ranked number 5 Top Women in Business by the Financial Times (Makers).
