15-24. Describe Pernille Spiers-Lopez’s approach to leadership at Ikea. Pernille Spiers-Lopez grew up in a small town in Denmark.

After finishing college she worked as a journalist for a short time, but she found that profession to be unsatisfying. Her next move was to relocate to the United States and open a business importing Danish furniture. Unfortunately, that venture failed. She then took a minimum-wage job selling furniture in Florida. Through hard work and determination within two years Spiers-Lopez was supervising 24 stores.

The regional furniture company where she was working was then purchased by Ikea in 1993.

She quickly advanced through the management ranks at Ikea, where she was the only woman on the company’s North American board. A 1997 businesswomen’s leadership conference led her to reassess her priorities and her role at Ikea. In response, she chose to alter her career path and moved into human resource management. She subsequently became the U.S. director of human resources; one of her first actions was to implement programs to recruit more minority and female managers. Today, half of the firm’s 75 top earners are female. Five women now serve on the management board. She also increased pay and benefits throughout the firm, especially for the lowest-paid employees.

Today, thanks in large part to Spiers-Lopez, Ikea offers one of the most generous benefits packages for full-time and part-time workers in the retailing sector. And along the way she was promoted to the position of CEO and President of Ikea North America and Global Chief Human Resource Officer.