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- The incredible rise of Ruth Porat, CFO at one of the most valuable companies in the world
The incredible rise of Ruth Porat, CFO at one of the most valuable companies in the world
The story starts in England, where Frieda and Dan Porat had their second child, Ruth, in 1957.
The couple had originally met in the 1940s in Palestine, where Frieda lived and where Dan was discharged from the British army after fighting in World War II (he was born in what is now Ukraine, and his entire family was killed in the Holocaust).
The family moved to Boston when Ruth was 2 so her father could work at Harvard and then to California three years later.
Her mom worked as a psychologist while her dad, a physicist, had a position at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
Seeing her mom manage to have both a fulfilling career and a close-knit family inspired her. Meanwhile, her father always acted "gender blind," expecting her and her younger sister to be just as ambitious and sharp with maths and sciences as their older brother.
A hard worker, Porat went on to get a degrees from Stanford, the Wharton School, and the London School of Economics. Her first job out of college was at Morgan Stanley.
She would stay there for nearly all of her pre-Google career, excepting a three year stint at Smith Barney.
That means she worked through a lot of high-highs and low-lows. When she joined in August of 1987, it was only seven weeks before the biggest one-day stock market plunge in the history of Wall Street.
During the late 90s tech boom, she worked with Mary Meeker to advise many of the firm's biggest IPOs, including Amazon and eBay.
Throughout, her incredible work ethic led to her taking phone calls in the delivery room when giving birth to her first son and leading a board meeting while laying down on a table after throwing out her back, according to The New York Times.
Source: Politico
When Porat had breast cancer in 2001 and then again two years later, she worked through her treatment.
"For me, going to work meant that I was in control of my life," she told Big Think of the experience. "The disease did not define me. And so in many respects work was a really important part of me being healthy."
My lesson from that awful experience was if you want to do something, do it," she said during a recent commencement address. "The worst that can happen is that it won’t work or won’t work out that well. I have seen too many people in my career think that there is some natural progression to life, with certain career milestones preceding whatever you may want in your personal life. Unfortunately life doesn’t know it is supposed to follow a schedule.
Watch the whole speech on YouTube
Porat has long preached a work-life "mix" instead of the more traditional work-life "balance." Striving for the latter, she says, sets women in particular up to fail. A satisfying work-life mix, however, lets you shift priorities depending on needs of each, without ever having isolation between the two.
Source: Politico
That philosophy would become particularly important during the financial crisis, when she advised the US Department of the Treasury on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the New York Federal Reserve Bank on AIG.
She told Politico that during that time she would work occasionally through the night, sometimes only coming home to shower.
But she calls being an adviser to the US Treasury the "most meaningful role" she played as a banker — and it almost didn't happen.
Almost all the senior leadership at Morgan Stanley was against taking the assignment, but Porat insisted.
"Pushing back on the prevailing view not to take on the role was the big ‘standing-on-a-soapbox’ moment of my career and I’m still surprised and glad I did it," she says.
But her advocacy paid off. She became Morgan Stanley's CFO in 2010.
Throughout her career, she's been outspoken about the particular challenges that women face at work.
I think what Sheryl Sandberg said about the importance of 'leaning in' is very true but it’s not sufficient," she has said. "Because if you are leaning into a door that is nailed shut, you are just going to get bloodied and tired of trying to push that door open. So you have got to have the next level, which is, 'how do you open up those doors to the ever-bigger roles?'
Source: Politico
She has always preached the power of finding "sponsors," people who will help you develop and advance your career.
"Your sponsor can help you when you’re not in the room, by battling gender biases that unfortunately still persist," she told the authors of "How Remarkable Women Lead."
Sponsors can help women break out of the lose-lose situation of being perceived as either too "pushy" or being looked down on for not demanding recognition.
They can "toot the horn on your behalf and speak up if you are being evaluated unfairly."
She's well-liked both inside the company and on Wall Street.
And Google was willing to shell out the big bucks to snap her up, paying her a salary of $650,000, a one-time signing bonus of $5 million, a $25 million new hire grant, and a $40 million biennial grant.
Last September, Porat reportedly paid $30 million for a historically significant house in Palo Alto.
Source: CBS San Francisco
Outside of work, she serves on Stanford's Board of Directors. In 2013, she pledged $1 million to a postdoctoral fellowship physicists at Stanford in honor of her father's 91st birthday.
Source: Stanford
Before she even started at Google, she says she would quote founder Larry Page while on Wall Street: "Incrementalism leads to irrelevance over time."
She summed up one of her own core beliefs in her recent commencement address: "Stick to your true north — build greatness for the long term."
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