Ruth Porat

Early life and education

Porat was born to a Jewish family in Sale, Greater Manchester England, the daughter of Dr. Dan and Frieda Porat. She moved at a young age to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where her father was a research fellow in the physics department at Harvard University. Her father later relocated the family to Palo Alto, California where he worked at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory for 26 years. Porat has a bachelor of arts degree in Economics & International Relations from Stanford University, and holds a master of science degree in industrial relations from London School of Economics and an MBA with distinction from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Morgan Stanley

Porat started her career at Morgan Stanley in 1987 but left to follow Morgan Stanley President Robert F. Greenhill to Smith Barney in 1993 and returned to Morgan Stanley in 1996. Before becoming CFO, she served as Vice Chairman of Investment Banking, from September 2003 to December 2009 and Global Head of the Financial Institutions Group from September 2006 through December 2009. She was previously the co-head of Technology Investment Banking and worked for Morgan Stanley in London. She is credited with creating the European debt financing that saved Amazon from collapse during the dot-com melt down in 2000. Her financial partner during the Internet investment banking craze was Mary Meeker, who is the godmother to Porat's three children.

During the financial crisis, Porat led the Morgan Stanley team advising the United States Department of the Treasury regarding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the New York Federal Reserve Bank with respect to AIG. In the 2011 HBO movie "Too Big to Fail," Porat is played by Jennifer van Dyck. In May 2011, she presented to the Bretton Woods Committee hosted by the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. on post-crisis reform and financial legislation, and to the World Economic Forum in Davos, in 2013 on "trust" levels within and of the financial sector.

In 2013 it was reported that President Barack Obama would nominate Porat as the next Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. However, it was reported later by Bloomberg News and The New York Times that Porat had contacted White House officials to withdraw her name from consideration because of improving conditions at Morgan Stanley and the acrimonious confirmation process inflicted upon then Treasury Secretary-nominee Jack Lew.

Porat's career was analyzed in the McKinsey & Company study "How Remarkable Women Lead". She was named "Best Financial Institutions CFO" in a poll conducted by Institutional Investor for its "2014 All-America Executive Team".

Google

On March 24, 2015 it was announced that Porat would join Google as their new CFO as of May 26, 2015. Bloomberg Business reported that her hiring deal included financial incentives that will eventually amount to $70 million by 2016. She has been credited with boosting Google's share price by reorganizing the Company and imposing financial discipline for the first time.

Boardships

She is a vice chair of the Board of Trustees of Stanford University, a member of the Board of Directors of Stanford Management Company the Borrowing Advisory Committee of the United States Treasury, the Board of Directors of The Council on Foreign Relations, the Board of Trustees of the Economic Club of New York, and the Bretton Woods Committee. She is a member of the Advisory Council of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Political views

Porat supported Senator Hillary Clinton when she ran for President in 2008, hosting a fundraiser at her apartment in The Dakota in New York City. In 2011, Porat expressed her support for increased taxes on the wealthy and declared on the topic of significant spending decreases that "we cannot cut our way to greatness."

Personal life

Porat has been married to Anthony Paduano, partner in the law firm of Paduano & Weintraub, since 1983. Porat is a survivor of breast cancer.