Before The Big League

Some people know what they want to do from an early age and focus on it relentlessly. Others are driven enough to reinvent themselves, changing careers and industries, and continuously pushing until they find what works for them. As a reminder that the path to success is not always linear, here are the highlights of what some successful people were doing at age 25:

Martha Stewart worked on Wall Street for five years as a stockbroker for Monness, Williams, and Sidel. Before that, she was a model, booking clients from Unilever to Chanel.In 1972, Stewart left Wall Street to be a stay-at-home mom. A year later, she started a catering business and became a household name and an empire unto herself.

At 25,Arianna Huffington was Arianna Stassinopolous,and after meeting famed journalist Henry Bernard Levin, she travelled to music festivals around the world with him as he wrote for the BBC. Now she is best known for her news website The Huffington Post, she is also an author,speaker and a syndicated columnist.

 

At age 25,Lloyd Blankfein was an unhappy lawyer who took a job as an associate at law firm Donovan Leisure after he got his law degree from Harvard. Now, as chairman of Goldman Sachs, his switch to investment banking at the age of 27 may not have been such a bad choice after all.

At 25, Marissa Mayer had just started her job as Google’s 20th employee and the company’s first female engineer.She remained with the company for 13 years before moving on to her current role as CEO of Yahoo.

 

In his early 20s, Buffett worked as an investment salesman for Buffett-Falk & Co. in Omaha before moving to New York to be a securities analyst at age 26.Considered one of the most successful investors of the 20th century, Buffett is now the chairman, CEO and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway, and consistently ranked among the world’s wealthiest people.

 

By 25, Sheryl Sandberg had already met mentor and future Treasury Secretary Larry Summers during her stint at the World Bank and was getting a Harvard MBA.She is currently serving as the COO of Facebook — an appointment she took up in August 2013.

In his mid twenties Eric Schmidt was building a deep background in computer science, earning a master’s and Ph.D at UC Berkeley.After serving as Google’s CEO for 10 years, in 2011, he was appointed the tech giant’s executive chairman.

An orphan raised by his uncle, by 25 Roman Abramovich had entered the black market through money he received from his wife’s parents and had already set up and liquidated at least 20 companies.A billionaire businessman today and most known for owning the Chelsea Football Club, his companies eventually became legal businesses in the early 1990s.