Carol A. Bartz (born August 29, 1948, in Winona, Minnesota) is the current CEO of Yahoo! and was previously Chairman, President, and CEO at Autodesk, the world’s fourth largest PC software company from 1992 until 2009. Autodesk net revenue increased from $285 million to more than $534 million during her tenure.
Career
After college, Bartz worked at 3M, but left after a request to transfer to the headquarters was denied, being told that “women don’t do these jobs”. She moved on to the computer industry, including stints at Digital Equipment Corporation and Sun Microsystems.
Bartz became CEO of Autodesk in 1992. According to Forbes, “Since 1992, Bartz, 56, has transformed Autodesk from an aimless maker of PC software into a leader of computer-aided design software, targeting architects and builders.” She is credited with instituting and promoting Autodesk’s “3F” or “fail fast-forward” concept — the idea that you engineer a company to fail in certain missions, to be resilient to failure, and to respond to it by overcoming quickly. She stepped down as CEO on May 1, 2006 and became the executive chairman of the board. Carl Bass replaced her as CEO. Read the rest of this entry »