It just goes to show regardless of your initial training or role in your current job
, you can work your way up into the highest echelons of your company structure. Peggy Fowler is one such success story in this regard. She started working for Portland General Electric as a chemist after earning her initial qualifications from the Oregon Graduate Institute School of Science and Engineering. Many people fail to understand that you don't actually require any real formal business qualifications in order to become the head of a multi-million dollar company. You just need to know as much about the niche industry that the company belongs to as you can. Following is some interesting trivia about Peggy Flower, a CEO of Portland General Electric.
Peggy Fowler worked her way through a variety of middle and minor management roles before becoming the CEO of Portland General Electric. In order to become the CEO of Portland General Electric it is understandable that the person should have some experience in a management role before becoming the CEO of Portland General Electric. Her first management role within the company was as the general manager of the environmental and analytic services department in the company. From here she assumed a variety of other management roles before becoming the CEO of Portland General Electric.
After Enron purchased Portland General Electric in 1997 Peggy was promoted to the role of director within the company however, this role was far short of the CEO of Portland General Electric that she was later to assume. Although the role of director gave Peggy and excellent salary it wasn't until she assumed the role of CEO of Portland General Electric that she was able to boast the title of the highest paid female CEO in Oregon. In 2000 Peggy was promoted to the CEO of Portland General Electric, a position she held until 2009 when she retired from the company after working with them for over 30 years.
Some interesting things to note about Peggy stem directly from her child hood. Her rise to CEO of Portland General Electric was not without its fair share of adversity some of which is directly relevant to her childhood. She is legally blind in one eye and had to wear an eye patch for a few of her earlier years. She was the child of a Quaker minister and was quite sheltered in regards to her upbringing (she did not watch television until she was around ten years of age). She was married at the age of 21 but the marriage resulted in a divorce a few years later.
So it really does go to show you that someone who has specialized in a single field, had their fair share of diversity and worked for a company that had filed for bankruptcy can become a CEO of Portland General Electric. It should be noted that Portland General Electric did bounce back under the guidance of Peggy Fowler when she was the CEO of Portland General Electric. She was even named by Portland Business Journal as the most admired CEO in 2005.