Akio Toyoda has an estimated net worth of $1 billion that he earned through his years with Toyota Motor Corporation. Born on May 3, 1956 in Nagoya, Japan, he is the grandson of the founder of Toyota Motors, Kiichiro Toyoda. He earned a degree in law from Keio University in 1979. In 1982, he earned his master’s degree in business administration from Babson College in the United States. He began his career with Toyota in 1984.

Toyoda joined the company’s board of directors in 2000. He was promoted to executive vice president in 2005. It was announced that he will be the forthcoming president in January 2009 and was later confirmed on June 23, 2009. He succeeded Katsuaki Watanabe who became the vice chairman replacing Katsuhiro Nakagawa.

Today, Toyota is the world’s top automaker with $228 billion in revenues compared to Volkswagen that has $222 billion. Despite the business impact of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the company still had an impressive performance. However, in 2012, they issued multiple waves of recalls that affected millions of vehicles around the world. Akio Toyoda was still included as #43 in the Powerful People list in December 2012 by Forbes.com. In the same year, he was also named Man of the Year by Autocar.