Peerless leader

She was also served well by her own flexibility. In 1992, as she was hitting stride with Disney, her husband was offered a key post at the prestigious Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He went, and Whitman followed, becoming president of Stride Rite shoes. She resurrected the failing Keds brand and then took a calculated risk. She joined Florists Transworld Delivery (FTD) a more than 80-year-old under-the-radar cooperative of florists who were frustrated by their lack of market reach. But even as president and CEO, the process of forming a network among loose confederations of florists who jealously guarded their own turfs and business models was akin to dragging cats to the bathtub.

After just over a year, she left to join Hasbro's preschool division, where she took charge of global marketing and management of the Mr. Potato Head brand and the Playskool brand that had been losing money fast. The task wasn't just brand growth; it meant a total turnaround. She was delighted by the challenge. So were her two sons, ages 13 and 10. Their mom had the coolest job. She was in charge of toys.

Meanwhile, on the opposite coast, a little Internet auction enterprise that began in a San Jose townhouse had morphed into a runaway business for its founder, Pierre Omidyar. A computer programmer, Mr. Omidyar had casually launched AuctionWeb on his personal Web page in 1995 just to test and develop his own programming skills.

Within two years, the firm, renamed eBay, had 300,000 users and 40 employees. It had sidestepped two efforts to purchase it, both by newspaper giants who visualized an avenue for online classified ads. And it had fended off competition and also acquired $5 million in venture funding.

Then Whitman's and Omidyar's paths crossed. EBay needed adult supervision.

"We went through the normal exercise, with 50 names on the list of potential candidates. And when we whittled it down to five, it was clear that Meg - mostly because of her brand and customer experience - stood head and shoulders above everybody else," recalls Omidyar, now worth more than $10 billion, according to Forbes magazine. "I remember her listening to our explanations of the business and she said: 'It looks like the experience people have with each other helps define your brand.' She was intuitive about us. She got us right away."

"She [understood] the powerful economics," adds Mr. Kagle, the venture capitalist. "And even more important, she 'got' immediately the emotional and community side of the brand.... She also understood that Pierre had created something special and that his wisdom would continue to be a huge asset," he says. "In my experience, most prospective or newly installed executives are interested in running their own show and creating their own history. Meg got Pierre just as she got the company. That, to me, displayed amazing maturity."

After performing as much due diligence as possible, Whitman and her family moved west and she joined eBay. She brought in experienced managers, added to her board Starbucks's Mr. Schultz and Scott Cook, an old colleague from Bain, and the eventual cofounder of Intuit.

Whitman then struck a strategic partnership with AOL, a move that fended off would-be rivals, including Microsoft, Yahoo, and Amazon. Within six months, she helped take the company public. More than 75 employees became millionaires. Omidyar and Jeff Skoll, his president, reached into the billions, and Whitman's net worth topped $1 billion.

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