Babson College has completed their annual study of woman-run businesses in Massachusetts. The results are interesting but not surprising.
Female CEO’s are in it for the long term. They’ve been in their positions an average of 14 years. They have an average of 29 years professional experience.
What does that mean? It took an average of 15 years to get to the corner office and many of them had to “buy” their way there by either founding the company or buying big chunks of ownership. “More than 95 percent are privately held and approximately 80 percent of the CEOs hold controlling ownership.”
I’m not too surprised about that. When I was working my way up the corporate ladder, many of us thought and more than one male mentor told us that it could be less frustrating to start up our own companies. No old boys club to constantly butt heads with. Some stuck it out in corporate. Some took that thinking and started their own companies.
Just about every industry is covered in the study but the leading industry is professional services at 38%. Not surprisingly, the key to success is relationship based (which is the key to success in most professional services businesses). And that might explain why the average female CEO in the study (95% of them) had a college degree.