Marjorie Scardino

Dame Marjorie Morris Scardino, DBE, FRSA (born 25 January 1947) is an American-born British business executive. She is the former CEO of Pearson PLC. Dame Marjorie became a trustee of Oxfam during her tenure at Pearson [1]. She has been criticized by Private Eye magazine because, while Oxfam campaigns against corporate tax avoidance as part of the IF Coalition [2], Pearson was "a prolific tax haven user...routing hundreds of millions of pounds through an elaborate series of Luxembourg companies (and a Luxembourg branch of a UK company) to avoid tax". She became the first female Chief Executive of a FTSE 100 company when she was appointed CEO of Pearson in 1997. She is also a non-executive director of Nokia and former CEO of the Economist Group. During her time at Pearson, she had tripled profits to a record £942m. In December 2013, she joined the board of Twitteras its first female director, after a controversy involving a lack of diversity on the Twitter board.

Scardino was born in Flagstaff, Arizona in 1947, and grew up in Texarkana, Texas. While living in Texas she participated in rodeo riding as a teenager. Scardino is a graduate of Baylor University with a BA in French and psychology in 1969. She began law school at George Washington University but dropped out to become a journalist at Associated Press in Charleston, West Virginia, and later obtained her law degree from the University of San Francisco School of Law.

Before 1985, Scardino was the editor of the newspaper, The Georgia Gazette.

She is the board chair of the MacArthur Foundation and a board member of the Carter Center. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She also won the 2002 Benjamin Franklin Medal.

In 2007, she was listed 17th on the Forbes list of the 100 most powerful women in the World.

On October 3, 2012, it was announced that she will step down as CEO of Pearson to be replaced by John Fallon.

In December 2013, she joined the board of Twitteras its first female director, after a controversy involving a lack of diversity on the Twitter board.

Scardino is married to Albert Scardino, whom she worked with during her time at The Georgia Gazette and later a media reporter for The New York Times. Her son is actor Hal Scardino.

Although she was born in the United States, she has taken British citizenship.

Scardino received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 2001

In 2014, Scardino received an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of Roehampton.