Welcome to E!'s Tales From the Top, our series on women who are leaders in their fields and masters of their craft. Spanning industries and experiences, these powerhouse women answer all the questions you've ever had about how they got to where they are today—and what they overcame to get there. Read along as they bring their resumés to life. 

Allow us to reintroduce you to Dany Garcia. 

You've likely seen her name somewhere—her resume is long, wide-ranging and, put simply, impressive. But often the first title attributed to Dany is: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's ex-wife. Which, she is, but it's arguably her least important and least remarkable title. She's got fistfuls of others: Producer on some of Hollywood's most lucrative blockbusters, founder of a womenswear line, professional bodybuilder and history-making owner of the XFL. But that's not where her story begins.

"My first job," she recalled in an exclusive interview with E! News, "was running an eight-stall barn when I was growing up in New Jersey, when I was 12 years old."

Seeing her obsession with horses, she elaborated, her grandparents paid $600 for a 12-year-old trail horse she named Bucky "and the deal was that I would work to pay for his board and feed. I was running and cleaning the barn and driving huge tractors and cutting hay down. It was an amazing experience. It was very much an eye-opening experience only because I didn't realize how much I could do."

Spoiler: It was a lot. While Dany may not have predicted every title under her (weight) belt today, she understood early on that she wanted to make money.

"At a very young age, I had a good conceptualization of what wealth meant," she explained. "My parents had immigrated as young teenagers from Cuba to America and my father worked at an autobody shop where he was the manager." With three children, she continued, "Money meant something and it was tight. And so for me, I was very much interested in how quickly could I create wealth because that would take care of my family. It was not about a wealth so I could have things, but it was an understanding of wealth would create freedom for my family."

That entrepreneurial seed was further planted as she worked at a men's suit store during high school. "I saw this trade off of owning your own business and what the results would be," she noted. "So as a young person, I was like, 'I'm going to be a millionaire and I'm going to run businesses.' That was sort of in my head: 'I'm going to create and run businesses.'"

Slowly but surely, Dany made those grand dreams her reality. While not all of her jobs were a hit (a college internship inputting data for an accounting department remains her worst to date), the University of Miami School of Business graduate began her career at Merrill Lynch and eventually, after becoming a new mom to now-19-year-old Simone Johnson (with Dwayne) founded her own wealth management firm.

Eonline