World's Richest Mom

World's richest moms, Margaret C. Whitman, better known as Meg, has had a storied career. A graduate of Princeton and Harvard Business School, she worked at Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG - News) before moving to California with her husband, a neurosurgeon who now works at Stanford Hospital. After successful stints at consulting firm Bain & Co., Disney (NYSE: DIS - News) and Hasbro (NYSE: HAS - News), she joined eBay (NasdaqGS: EBAY - News), then a small tech firm with 30 employees, as chief executive. In 2004 she debuted on Forbes' World's Billionaires List.

It was her own mother, Whitman writes in a book published by Random House this January, titled The Power of Many, who gave her "a bias toward action." In an interview with ForbesWoman earlier this year, Whitman discussed the relationship, explaining that her mother, who eventually learned Mandarin and visited China 80 times, had taught her that "you don't have to be perfect to be a leader, but you can't be timid."

Now that bias is leaning toward the governor's mansion, as Whitman campaigns to replace Republican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. During her campaign she has highlighted her mother's adventurous spirit in driving Meg and her two siblings from their home in Long Island on camping trips to California. Today she includes her husband and her two sons as influences in her love of the West Coast. They are sporty California residents, according to her campaign website, and as such are reasons she is so dedicated to the economically ailing state. "If we let California fail, we all fail," she says. "And we love California too much to let it fail. We have to work together to make it the place of our dreams again."

For Whitman, motherhood was not a deterrent to her success, but an aid, lending what she now says is inspiration and support during her current political endeavors. read morehttp://www.forbes.com/2010/05/04/richest-moms-billionaire-whitman-rowling-walton-bettencourt.html