SHARON FIEHLER

Founder, ABC to CEO

OUR STORY

Our mission is to prepare young women with the knowledge of the paths to CEO, helping them realize they can be more than just a leader — they can be THE leader. 

Why ABC to CEO.  ABC To CEO was created after I retired from a successful career in a Fortune 500 Company. I reported to the Chairman and CEO and was part of the C-Suite of Executives. During the last ten years of my career I had global responsibilities that ranged from Human Resources to Information Services to Supply Chain Management; from Global Security to Flight Services to Facilities Management. My responsibilities were carried out with the efforts of several hundred employees who were on my teams and we implemented our goals with annual budgets in excess of several hundred million dollars. It was a great career by many measures and I truly felt fortunate to have had the opportunity but, as I reflected on it after it was over, I realized that as much as I accomplished, I felt I didn’t do all that I maybe could have done. Specifically, at age 60 I regretted that at an early age I never thought about guiding my career in a manner necessary for what it would have taken to be considered for that top job, the CEO.  As we look at the statistics of the number of women who are CEOs today, there is clearly an imbalance of men versus women.  And in talking to successful women today, many still do not have the role of CEO on their radar screen.  My hope is that ABC To CEO will change that for the next generation of women.

What I did wrong.  By the time I was mid-career I had made too many mistakes to be on a path of becoming a CEO.   Where do I start to explain them all?  First, even before beginning my career, although not unheard of, majoring in psychology is not high on the list of degree majors for CEOs (albeit later obtaining an MBA was a major plus for me).  Next, I married at an early age without considering if my spouse would be interested in relocations.  And then there were the career mistakes.  The first 15 years of my career was limited to human resource functions, no other type of staff functions and certainly not any operating, sales, technical and/or financial positions and definitely not in roles with profit and loss responsibilities.  And because I continued to get promoted within the human resource arena I did not pursue roles outside of human resources; why would I, I was getting promoted, right?  Little did I realize that I was missing an entire world of other experiences.  As I look back on it now, by mid-career I had made so many wrong turns I could never have found the road to becoming a CEO even if the idea had occurred to me.  Although the paths I took provided many rewards both personally and financially, they led to a dead-end as for as becoming a CEO was concerned. 

Why ABC to CEO may help others.  The goal of ABC to CEO is to provide young women with the knowledge that I and many other women have not had available to us.  For women who have accomplished becoming a CEO, either of an existing company or of a company they created, much can be learned as they did it despite many obstacles....our hats go off to them for finding their way through the difficult maze with no one showing them a way!  Our objective is not to encourage girls to make becoming a CEO their career goal if that is not their dream.  As a matter of fact, many CEOs might say that they would not wish their role on anyone as it is a life-style commitment requiring great personal sacrifices.  Our mission is to stop women from going down dead ends if their objective is to someday be at the helm of running an organization.  The bottom line is that with the right career path and awareness of “dead-end” career moves and of life-style decisions that limit one's opportunities, more women can set the stage for being qualified to assume the role of a CEO.  Or maybe our materials will encourage them to create a company of their own in order to become “the” leader. Or maybe they just become better leaders, period.  In the end, we are not about changing what girls want to be, rather we want to increase the choices of what they can become.