Why Marriott veteran Stephanie Linnartz is ‘taking risks’ to become Under Armour’s CEO
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Women in finance tout mentorship and AI as worthwhile diversity efforts, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty emphasizes skill-based hiring, and Fortune senior writer Maria Aspan tells us why a Marriott veteran took a risk to become Under Armour's new CEO. Enjoy your weekend!
- Leap of faith. Back in February, when Marriott president Stephanie Linnartz left the hotel chain after 25 years to become the chief executive of sportswear retailer Under Armour, my initial reaction was: “Huh. Yes, it’s a CEO job—but why this one?”
So for this year’s Most Powerful Women issue of Fortune, I sat down with Linnartz to ask exactly that question—and to examine the landscape for ambitious, experienced female executives like Linnartz who want to become CEOs, but who still get far fewer opportunities than their male counterparts.
“I always had this idea that the rewards of taking risks are, the great majority of the time, worth it,” Linnartz told me in late August, from her sunny new corner office at Under Armour headquarters in Baltimore.
After all, she wanted to be a CEO—and when the Under Armour job opened up, “I was ready to take that next leap.”
Linnartz had spent almost her entire career at Marriott, where she climbed to become No. 2 and the most senior woman at the world’s largest hotel chain. At Under Armour, she’s jumping to a struggling and much smaller company—one where she’s effectively the third CEO in four years to work for executive chairman and founder Kevin Plank. The company’s sales growth has stagnated; its share price has plunged 87% from its 2015 high; its once-buzzy brand is seen as anywhere from “inconsistent” (per Linnartz) to “second-tier” (per analysts); and its founder—who “stepped down” as CEO at the start of 2020 but who still owns 65% of the company’s voting shares—continues to land Under Armour in unflattering headlines.
So Linnartz is taking on a big turnaround job, on all sorts of fronts. She’s also following her longtime advice to other women on how to advance in corporate America: “Take the toughest, most difficult job or project someone can give you, because that’s how you move ahead,” is how Linnartz described her career philosophy to Fortune’s Leigh Gallagher eight years ago.
Taking on those sorts of jobs doesn’t always go as planned—as we have recently been reminded by the cases of Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino, former Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer, and the broader data-backed phenomenon of the “glass cliff.” But her friends and colleagues are betting that Linnartz is up to the challenge at Under Armour. As Accenture CEO Julie Sweet, No. 2 on this year’s MPW list and a longtime business partner of Linnartz’s, told me: “She knows what the challenges are—and she’s going to absolutely overcome them.”
For more of Linnartz’s strategy to do so, read my full profile here. And for more on these themes, check out additional coverage of this week's Most Powerful Women Summit below.
Maria Aspan
maria.aspan@fortune.com
@mariaaspan
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
