Pleasant Rowland is the woman who created American Girl Dolls. She was born Pleasant Williams Thiele on March 8, 1941. She is also an American educator, reporter, writer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist.
She is also known for her philanthropic work in the arts in Madison, Wisconsin and her efforts to redevelop historic properties in Aurora, New York.
She was born in Chicago and grew up in Bannockburn which is a suburb north of Chicago. She is the oldest of her three sisters and her only brother.
Her sister Barbara Whitney Carr, was the former president and CEO of the Chicago Botanic Gardens from 1995 to 2007.
Her father was Edward M. Thiele, a Chicago advertising executive who was president of the Leo Burnett ad agency from 1961 to 1971.
After graduating from Wells College in 1962, Rowland began to teach second-grade students at Mattapan Elementary in Massachusetts. From 1962 to 1968, she continued to work as a schoolteacher in several states.
She was an on-air reporter and anchor for KGO-TV, the San Francisco ABC affiliate, from 1968 to 1971.
She left the news industry to work as a director of product development at the publishing company.
She was involved in writing and publishing children’s textbooks from 1971 to 1978. She also published the children’s magazine guide.
She created a comprehensive language-arts program called Beginning to Read, Write, and Listen.
The program was informally known as the “letterbooks” and designed for kindergarten and first-grade students.
Rowland had also developed the Addison-Wesley Reading Program until the project was shelved in 1981.
In 1986, Rowland founded Pleasant Company to manufacture American Girl Dolls. She had saved $1.2 million from textbook royalties and invested the majority of those savings into the project.
The American Girl product line aimed to teach aspects of American history through a six-book series from the perspective of a girl living in that period.
The company would go on to produce dolls, books, and historically accurate accessories (now known as the Historical Characters.)
Rowland described the American Girl dolls as “chocolate cake with vitamins”: incorporating imagination, play, and history.
Rowland was inspired to create the American Girls Collection during a vacation in Colonial Williamsburg in 1984.
Rowland worked with Valerie Tripp, a close friend and colleague from Addison-Wesley, to develop characters for the first line of dolls.
Each character represented a different period of American history. The first three characters were Kirsten Larson, a Swedish immigrant who settled with her extended family in the 1850s Minnesota Territory; Samantha Parkington from the Progressive Era; and Molly McIntire, a character living during World War II.
In the first two years of Pleasant Company, sales grew from $1.7 million to $7.6 million. In the third year of operations, Rowland was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Pleasant Company eventually began to produce more dolls, starting in 1991 with Felicity Merriman: a 1770s girl living during the American Revolution in Williamsburg, Virginia.
They continued to produce more books, clothing (for dolls and children), dollhouses, children’s furniture, and more.
Rowland described the American Girl novels as celebrating family, hard work, honesty, and courage.
We want to honor the achievements and talents of a woman who has made a huge impact on what we do and represent.
Thanks to what she created, our Girl AGain boutique exists and helps neurodivergent individuals to learn and practice professional skills, interact with people on a corporate environment, socialize, and make friends.
Happy Women’s History Month!
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