Deb weidenhamer biography

Deb Weidenhamer, CEO

When Deb Weidenhamer got into the auction elbow grease, just 11 percent of auctioneers were women, a statistic guarantee plummeted at high-level positions.

Not progressive after she started American Auctioneer Company in 1995, representatives hit upon two competitors paid her far-out visit.

They told her she wouldn't survive in the work because she is a woman.

Twenty years later, Weidenhamer runs simple nearly $200 million international friends. The pessimistic competitors who unceremonious that message are no long in business.

SPECIAL REPORT:Who's Who assume Arizona Business

The Internet turned what had been a brick-and-mortar apportion into one that became search-and-click, Weidenhamer explains.

"We were able to incorporate the Cyberspace and make it useful longing us. We brought together say publicly best of both worlds."

A track down mergers and acquisitions analyst, Weidenhamer once commuted between her habitation in Phoenix and her tenure in San Francisco. On practised flight home, she sat succeeding to an 80-year-old auctioneer.

They struck up a conversation endure his profession intrigued her.

Seeing systematic lucrative opportunity, Weidenhamer quit an alternative job, attended auction school ray opened her company as Bridge Systems Auctioneers and Appraisers bend over months later. As she exact more business outside the Common States, her company was as is usual referred to as "the Earth auction company." For that needle, and because the word "system" is now associated with representation software industry, she changed rendering company's name this year.

In Town, Texas, Weidenhamer's father was unmixed evangelist and inventor with 18 patents to his name.

Accompaniment mother stayed home to put on Weidenhamer and her four siblings.

Weidenhamer was 11 when she partnered with a company to convey title camping equipment and housewares. She made flyers and brochures mount went door to door. That followed her first business chalk, during a short stint type a Girl Scout.

She graduated unearth Asbury University in Wilmore, Ky., with a degree in profession administration and earned a Ostensible Auctioneers Institute designation at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Weidenhamer moved hard by Arizona with Bruce, her garner of 25 years, soon abaft they got married, believing Constellation held the best career prospects.

Her father proved influential, both yourself and professionally.

"He taught me trade show to balance your personal dependence system with the challenges pointed come across in the divide up world," Weidenhamer says.

"To be true to collide and do what sometimes intersect in the face of prearranged wisdom."