Jane Cahill Pfeiffer (September 29, 1932 – March 5, 2019), was an American executive. Pfeiffer was the first chairwoman of the

National Broadcasting Company The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

(NBC) between 1978 and 1980.

Early life

On September 29, 1932, Pfeiffer was born as Jane Pennington Cahill in Washington, D.C.

Education

Pfeiffer earned a B.A. in speech and drama from the University of Maryland in 1954. From 1956 to 1957 she undertook graduate courses in philosophy at Georgetown University and

Catholic University Catholic higher education includes universities, colleges, and other institutions of higher education privately run by the Catholic Church, typically by religious institutes. Those tied to the Holy See are specifically called pontifical univ ...

Career

Pfeiffer entered a

novitiate The novitiate, also called the noviciate, is the period of training and preparation that a Christian ''novice'' (or ''prospective'') monastic, apostolic, or member of a religious order undergoes prior to taking vows in order to discern whether ...

to become a

Roman Catholic nun A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery or convent.''The Oxford English Dictionary'', vol. X, page 599. The term is o ...

, leaving after six months. Pfeiffer started her career at IBM as a systems-engineer trainee. In 1966, Pfeiffer was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson to serve as the first female White House fellow, until 1967. Pfeiffer worked with

Robert Wood Robert Wood may refer to: Art * Robert E. Wood (painter, born 1971), Canadian landscape artist * Robert William Wood (1889–1979), American landscape artist * Robert Wood (artist), accused and acquitted of the Camden Town murder Military * R ...

, undersecretary of the

Department of Housing and Urban Development The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It administers federal housing and urban development laws. It is headed by the Secretary of Housing and Urb ...

, on streamlining the Housing and Home Finance Agency. Pfeiffer was a vice president of IBM. Pfeiffer was an executive at NBC. Pfeiffer solved an internal criminal scandal, reduced the NBC board of directors from eighteen to nine members, and reorganized the news division. However, her staff found that her memos were arrogant, that she did not delegate responsibility, and they disliked her wholesale replacements in the finance, personnel, and technical areas. In 1979, Pfeiffer became the first female chair of NBC, a job she held until 1980. Pfeiffer resigned in 1980.

Original "Supersister"

In 1979, the

Supersisters ''Supersisters'' was a set of 72 trading cards produced and distributed in the United States in 1979 by Supersisters, Inc. They featured famous women from politics, media and entertainment, culture, sports, and other areas of achievement. The ca ...

trading card set was produced and distributed; one of the cards featured Pfeiffer's name and picture.

Personal life

On March 5, 2019, Pfeiffer died in Vero Beach, Florida.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pfeiffer, Jane Cahill 1932 births 2019 deaths Businesspeople from Washington, D.C. Georgetown University alumni Catholic University of America alumni White House Fellows University of Notre Dame Trustees