Cheryl Miller is a U.S. business executive. In 2019, she became the first female chief executive officer of a publicly traded auto retail company in the

Fortune 500 The ''Fortune'' 500 is an annual list compiled and published by ''Fortune'' magazine that ranks 500 of the largest United States corporations by total revenue for their respective fiscal years. The list includes publicly held companies, along ...

. Miller served as the CEO of

AutoNation AutoNation is an American automotive retailer based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which provides new and pre-owned vehicles and associated services in the United States. The company was founded by Wayne Huizenga in 1996, starting with twelve Aut ...

from 2019 to 2020. She was one of the 38 female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

Early life and education

Cheryl Miller was born in

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and Unincorporated ...

and raised in

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...

. Her father worked for the

U.S. Postal Service The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U. ...

and her mother was a government worker. Miller graduated from

James Madison University James Madison University (JMU, Madison, or James Madison) is a public research university in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Founded in 1908 as the State Normal and Industrial School for Women at Harrisonburg, the institution was renamed Madison Coll ...

with a bachelor's degree in finance and business.

Career

Miller started her automotive career with

Circuit City Circuit City is an American consumer electronics retail company, which was founded in 1949 by Samuel Wurtzel as the Wards Company, operated stores across the United States, and pioneered the electronics superstore format in the 1970s. After m ...

. She worked in financing vehicles for an automotive company and later worked with the Alamo National car rental agency. In 1998, she moved to Florida to join a company which was the predecessor of

. Miller joined AutoNation in 2009 and in 2014, she was promoted to

chief financial officer The chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization that is assigned the primary responsibility for managing the company's finances, including financial planning, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and financ ...

. In 2017, she managed a partnership with the self-driving company

Waymo Waymo LLC, formerly known as the Google self-driving car project, is an American autonomous driving technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc, the parent company of Google. Waymo opera ...

. In July 2019, Miller became the

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

of AutoNation. As the CEO of AutoNation she oversaw 26,000 employees and 325 auto dealerships across the United States. Miller resigned her position as CEO for AutoNation due to undisclosed medical reasons in July 2020. She was still liable for bonuses and stock for the work she had done and in addition she received a leaving settlement of $5.4m. Under the terms she was not allowed to work in competition to the company for a year.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Miller, Cheryl 21st-century American businesswomen 21st-century American businesspeople American women chief executives Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Businesspeople from Baltimore James Madison University alumni Puerto Rican business executives American chief executives in the automobile industry 21st-century Puerto Rican businesspeople 21st-century Puerto Rican businesswomen 20th-century Puerto Rican businesspeople 20th-century Puerto Rican businesswomen