Liz Meyerdirk

Industry: Transportation

She’s bagged takeout schnitzels and cold-called 200-plus restaurants in her mission to build out Uber Eats, a path that eventually led her to broker major deals with Starbucks and McDonald’s. Uber Eats is on pace to be the largest food-delivery company outside China, and Meyerdirk is a big reason for that. She’s scaled up the Eats team, which works with over 220,000 restaurant partners in more than 500 cities in 35 countries across six continents. As detailed in Uber’s IPO filing this spring, her business notched $1.5 billion in revenue during 2018, up 149% from the year prior. Though Meyerdirk started out in investment banking, Uber wasn’t such a U-turn. “Two close friends worked at Uber,” she says. “One has known my husband since college, and the other was a former colleague. When two people you trust agree, it probably makes sense to listen.”