Ilene Gordon

Ilene Gordon has pushed the boundaries for most of her life. As a junior high school student in the 1960s, she got special permission to take shop class rather than home economics, the only choice for girls. She aspired to be a high school math teacher until she attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Sloan School of Management, where she was inspired by other female STEM students to pursue a career in business. At MIT in the early 1970s, she negotiated a part-time job share arrangement before it was even a concept. As a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, she was the only professional woman in the London office. And she was the first female director of five different companies and the first female chairman of the Economic Club of Chicago.

As a young executive in the manufacturing industry, Gordon learned how to gain the confidence of males twice her age and how to develop and execute a successful turn-around strategy. She is an effective leader who has transformed a multi-billion-dollar, century-old company to remain relevant and deliver exceptional shareholder value. Under Gordon's tenure as chairman and CEO of Ingredion Incorporated from 2009 to 2017, the company’s share price more than quadrupled, growing market cap from $2 billion to $10 billion. As a result, Gordon was named to FORTUNE's Most Powerful Women list for five consecutive years.