Geisha Williams made history last year when she became the first Latina CEO of a Fortune 500 company. The Cuban-born immigrant’s ambition was emboldened when a former mentor asked her a burning question.
“Geisha, somebody has to run this company some day. Why not you?” he asked.
“I thought, why not me? Is this guy kidding? Women weren’t running companies. Latina women weren’t running companies. Immigrants weren’t running companies. So I thought that was just ridiculous,” she told CNN’s, Poppy Harlow.
Back in In March 2017, became the president and CEO of PG&E (PCG), a company worth almost $30 billion. Williams has an impressive with 20,000 employees, and the company provides electricity and natural gas to about 16 million people in California – and still manages to remain relatively humble.
According to Williams, a summer job at a local power company helped her fall in love with her current industry.
“I fell in love with the field of energy and electricity. It’s the silent enabler. It’s what powers America. What powers commerce. I fell in love with the culture of this industry, very service-oriented, very much focused on the community, and I just loved it,” Williams told Harlow.
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