Carly Fiorina

Carly Fiorina is a business executive who was a Republican candidate in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. She served as chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005, the first woman to lead a Fortune 50 business.

Fiorina was born September 6, 1954, in Austin, Texas. She received a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and medieval history from Stanford University in 1976. In 1980, she earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of Maryland, and in 1989, she earned a Master of Science in business from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

After graduating from the University of Maryland, Fiorina worked an entry-level position at AT&T Corporation. She was quickly promoted to the position of commercial account executive, and in 1995 she became head of North American sales. The next year, she engineered the successful spin-off of AT&T’s research division as Lucent Technologies and coordinated their $3 billion initial public offering. In 1998, she became president of Lucent's Global Service Provider Business. In 1999, Fiorina became president and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard, a position she held until 2005.

After leaving HP, Fiorina served as a commentator for Fox News and was an economic advisor to Republican Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. In 2010, Fiorina was the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate from California but lost the election to incumbent Barbara Boxer. In 2014, Fiorina founded the Unlocking Potential Project, a political action committee dedicated to recruiting female voters, and served as its chairman.

Photo by Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Sources:

CNN (2020, Jan. 7). Carly Fiorina Fast Facts. Retrieved on Feb. 21, 2020, from https://www.cnn.com/2015/05/28/us/carly-fiorina-fast-facts/index.html.

Stewart, A. (2019, Sept. 2). Carly Fiorina: American business executive and politician. In Britannica. Retrieved on Feb. 21, 2020 from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carly-Fiorina.