Hailed as the most important woman on Wall Street for her work as CFO of Morgan Stanley, Ruth Porat became Google’s first female CFO in 2015. Porat graduated from Stanford and earned master’s degrees from the London School of Economics and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania before joining Morgan Stanley in 1987. After a stint at Smith Barney from 1993–1996 she returned to Morgan Stanley, becoming vice chairman of investment banking in 2003 and global head of the financial institutions group in 2006 before becoming CFO in 2009. She helped Morgan Stanley weather the 2008 financial crisis and advised the United States Department of the Treasury on handling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. She gave lectures to the International Monetary Fund in 2011 and the World Economic Forum in 2013 on financial reforms and trust levels in the wake of the financial crisis.