Quick Facts
Biography
Margaret "Margo" Georgiadis is an American business executive, and as of January 2017, the CEO of Mattel.
Career
Mattel Inc.
Margaret Georgiadis was appointed CEO of Mattel Inc. in January 2017. She took on the role on February 8, 2017 from Christopher A. Sinclair, who became Executive Chairman of the toy maker, making her the second woman ever to hold this position at the company. According to Piper Jaffray analyst Stephanie Wissink, Georgiadis was selected for CEO (and member of the Board of Directors) in the hope of bringing “a fresh perspective on enterprise alignment and a female voice at the helm does reinvigorate the potential for a dramatic modernization of the Mattel operating model.” With this new position, the Fortune 500 company list of female executives increased to 28.
Prior career
Georgiadis started her career in 1986 at McKinsey where she was a business analyst for two years. In 1990 she became a Partner at the firm. She left in 2004 for Discover Financial Services, where she was the Executive Vice President of Card Products and the Chief Marketing Officer until 2008. She played a key role in taking the company public, managing consumer and business credit cards, their E-business, and corporate marketing services. Her impact at the firm transformed it from three years of receivables declines, culminating in a sustained 4%+ of receivables growth and top industry margins with sales increasing more than 25% to $93B.
For nine months Georgiadis was Principal at Synetro Capital LLC in 2009. The next two years she spent as Vice President of Global Sales Operations at Google in charge of the firm’s strategies, sales operations and guiding the sales technology teams. She then moved to Groupon for five months as their COO. In 2011 she returned to Google where she was President, Americas, at Alphabet Inc., a position she held until her current Mattel one.
Other executive roles
Georgiadis is also a director at McDonald's Corp., Amyris Inc., the Music Institute of Chicago, The Chicago Network, Nine West Holdings, Inc. and the Advertising Council Inc. She is a board member of the Economic Club of Chicago. In the past she was a Director of NorthShore University HealthSystem and a Board Member of The Jones Group Inc.
Education
She has Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from Harvard-Radcliffe Colleges and an MBA from Harvard Business School.