Richest female CEO in US used to be a man

Here’s an interesting nugget of information about high-paid American executives: The highest-paid woman CEO was born a man. The CEO in question is named Martine Rothblatt.

She was born Martin Rothblatt. She founded Sirius Satellite Radio in 1994, as Martin, then had a sex-change operation. Then she founded United Therapeutics in 1996 and has served as its CEO ever since. She made $38 million last year, mostly in stock options. That $38 million put Ms Rothblatt a fair way above the second-highest paid woman on the New York Times’ list of highest paid CEOs in America, Marissa Mayer of Yahoo. Mayer made $25 million.

Those are big pay packages. The average female CEO on the list makes only $1.6 million less than the average male CEO. Rothblatt and Mayer are two of 11 female CEOs on the list.