From Wikipedia:
Carly Fiorina (born Cara Carleton Sneed; September 6, 1954) is an American politician and businesswoman. She is the 2010 Republican nominee for a United States Senate seat representing California. Fiorina served as chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005 and previously was an executive vice president at AT&T, where she coordinated the spinoff and initial public offering of Lucent.
Fiorina was considered one of the most powerful women in business during her tenure at Lucent and Hewlett-Packard. The spinoff of Agilent Technologies – which had been initiated by her predecessor, Lew Platt – was completed shortly after she joined the company in 1999. Under her leadership, in 2002, the company completed a contentious merger with rival computer company Compaq. In 2005, the Hewlett-Packard board forced Fiorina to resign.
In 2008, Fiorina served as a top economic advisor to Republican presidential candidate John McCain. She currently serves on the boards of several major business organizations. In November 2009, Fiorina announced she would seek the Republican nomination to challenge incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer for her United States Senate seat representing California. On June 8, 2010, Fiorina won the primary election, and will face incumbent Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer in the general election in November 2010.
Early life and education
Fiorina was born as Cara Carleton Sneed in Austin, Texas, on September 6, 1954, the daughter of Joseph Tyree Sneed III – a law school professor, dean, and federal judge – and Madelon Montross (née Juergens), a portrait and abstract artist. She attended Charles E. Jordan High School in Durham, North Carolina, for her senior year; the family relocated frequently during this time.
Fiorina received a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and medieval history from Stanford University in 1976. She attended the UCLA School of Law but dropped out after one semester. Fiorina received a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in marketing from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park in 1980. She received a Master of Science in management from the MIT Sloan School of Management under the Sloan Fellows program in 1989.
Career in business
Fiorina worked various secretarial and receptionist positions, including a stint at Hewlett-Packard as a temporary worker through Kelly Services. She later worked as a receptionist at real estate firm Marcus & Millichap (including working briefly as a broker). During her speech at the 2006 ICSC convention in Las Vegas, Fiorina noted that her time at Marcus & Millichap helped her learn how to navigate the business world. Fiorina taught English in Italy; her first husband's career had taken them to that country.
AT&T and Lucent
She joined AT&T in 1980 as a management trainee and rose to become a senior vice president overseeing the company's hardware and systems division. In 1995, Fiorina led corporate operations for the spinoff from AT&T of Lucent, reporting to Lucent chief executive Henry B. Schacht; she played a key role in planning and implementing the 1996 initial public offering of stock and company launch strategy. Later in 1996, Fiorina was appointed president of Lucent's consumer products business, reporting to Rich McGinn, president and chief operating officer. In 1997, she was appointed chairman of Lucent's consumer communications joint venture with Philips consumer communications.
Later that year, she was named group president for the global service provider business at Lucent, overseeing marketing and sales for the company's largest customer segment.
A year later, Fiorina was ranked as the most powerful woman in business by Fortune magazine. (The 1998 listing was the magazine's first ranking.) In 1998, Fortune magazine named her the "most powerful woman in business" in its inaugural listing, and she was included in the Time 100 in 2004 and remained in the Fortune listing throughout her tenure at HP, and was #10 on the Forbes Magazine's List of The World's 100 Most Powerful Women for 2004.
She became regarded by many as being the first woman to head up a Fortune 20 company, and to have overcome the proverbial "glass ceiling".
Hewlett-Packard
In July 1999, Hewlett-Packard Company named Fiorina chief executive officer succeeding Lewis Platt and prevailing over the internal candidate Ann Livermore. She became the first woman to lead a Fortune 20 company. Fiorina immediately became a highly visible chief executive, and remained so throughout her tenure at the company with a vast array of engineering talent at her disposal, headed up by Rajiv Gupta.
Fiorina proceeded to break up HP, and merge the part she kept with the PC maker Compaq. Although the decision to spin-off the company's technical equipment division predated her arrival, one of her first major responsibilities as chief executive was overseeing the separation of the unit into the standalone Agilent Technologies. In 2000, Fiorina proposed the acquisition of computer-services business EDS, but withdrew the bid after the proposal received a poor reception from HP shareholders.
While Fiorina's 2000 bid to acquire EDS was abandoned, HP did go on to purchase the company in 2008. In 2001, Fiorina was named one of the thirty most powerful women in America by Forbes magazine.
In 2002, in the wake of the bursting of the Tech Bubble, Fiorina spearheaded a controversial merger with Compaq, a leading competitor in the industry. Fiorina fought for the merger, and it was implemented despite strong opposition from board member Walter Hewlett (the son of company co-founder William Hewlett) who claimed that the merger was being pursued by Fiorina in desperation to make a strategic decision and to give her some breathing space from Wall Street.
Fiorina, on March 4, 2003 as CEO and Chairman of the Board of Hewlett-PackardHe launched a proxy fight against Fiorina's efforts, but that failed. The Compaq merger temporarily created the world's largest personal computer manufacturer by units shipped, a position the company regained after Fiorina left the company.
Fiorina presented herself as a realist regarding the effects of globalization. She has been a strong proponent, along with other technology executives, of the expansion of the H-1B visa program.
In January 2004, at a meeting to "head off rising protectionist sentiment in Congress," Fiorina said: "There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore. We have to compete for jobs as a nation."
While Fiorina argued that the only way to "protect U.S. high-tech jobs over the long haul was to become more competitive [in the United States]," her comments prompted "strong reactions" from some technology workers who argued that lower wages overseas outside the United States encouraged the offshoring of American jobs. Fiorina responded against protectionism in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, writing that while "America is the most innovative country," it would not remain so if the country were to "run away from the reality of the global economy."
In early January 2005, the Hewlett-Packard board of directors discussed with Fiorina a list of issues that the board had regarding the company's performance. The board proposed a plan to shift her authority to HP division heads, which Fiorina resisted. A week after the meeting, the confidential plan was leaked to the Wall Street Journal. Less than a month later, the board brought back in Tom Perkins and forced Fiorina to resign as chairman and chief executive officer of the company. The company's stock jumped on news of Fiorina's departure.
Under the company's agreement with Fiorina, which was characterized as a golden parachute by some, she was paid slightly more than $20 million in severance. When Fiorina became CEO in July, 1999, HP's stock price was $52 per share, and when she left 5 1/2 years later in February, 2005, it was $21 per share—a loss of over 60% of the stock's value. Although, this number does not include gains from dividends and the Agilent Technologies distribution, nor does it account for the 2-1 stock split in September 2000 which makes the effective loss only 20%. During this same time period, HP competitor Dell's stock price increased from $37 to $40 per share.
Fiorina was succeeded, on an interim basis, by Patty Dunn as chairman, and then-CFO Robert Wayman as acting chief executive. Before her departure, Fiorina had launched an intensive hunt for board room leaks, and one of the leakers later turned out to be George A. Keyworth, II. Dunn continued to investigate along these lines to determine which board member(s) had been leaking information to the media. The methods used by Dunn led to the HP spying scandal and she was soon succeeded by Mark Hurd.
Outside judgments on Fiorina's tenure at HP are mixed. In 2008, Infoworld grouped her with a list of products and ideas as flops, declaring her to be the "anti-Steve Jobs" for reversing the goodwill of American engineers and for alienating existing customers. In 2008, Loren Steffy of the New York Times suggested that the EDS acquisition well after Fiorina's tenure was evidence that her actions as CEO were justified.
In April 2009, the business magazine web site Condé Nast Portfolio listed Fiorina as one of "The 20 Worst American CEOs of All Time", characterizing the HP-Compaq merger as a widely regarded failure, and citing the halving of HP's stock value under Fiorina's tenure.
After HP
After resigning from HP, Fiorina was named to several board memberships. She was named to the boards of directors at Revolution Health Group and computer security company Cybertrust. The following year, she became a member of the board of directors for chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. She joined the board of trustees of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum. She is an Honorary Fellow of the London Business School.
Media career
Fiorina enjoyed tremendous media exposure before and during her tenure at HP, speaking at many business conferences and appearing on the cover of numerous business magazines and internationally on social magazines such as Aera. In the years since leaving HP, Fiorina has maintained her visibility in the media. In a commencement address in May 2005, Fiorina said about her tenure at Hewlett-Packard:
"The worst thing I could have imagined happened. I lost my job in the most public way possible, and the press had a field day with it all over the world. And guess what? I'm still here. I am at peace and my soul is intact."
During an interview with Charlie Rose, Fiorina said she believed that her leadership was strong during her tenure with Hewlett-Packard, and that the Compaq merger was a critical step for the company, although the merger was misunderstood by the board of directors.
In October 2006, Fiorina released an autobiography, Tough Choices, about her career and her views on such issues as what constitutes a leader, how women can thrive in business, and the role technology will continue to play in reshaping the world. Fiorina signed on with the Fox Business Network to become a business commentator on the network.
She is Chairman and CEO of Carly Fiorina Enterprises where, according to her political campaign Facebook page, she is "bringing her unique perspective and experience to bear on the challenging issues of our world, championing economic growth and empowerment for a more prosperous and secure world."
She has appeared at many public events. She rang the opening bell of the Wall Street stock market on the official day of the HP-Compaq merger and in 2000 she was the ceremonial host opening the largest EasyInternetcafé at Times Square and the opening of the Epcot ride Mission: SPACE. In 2004, Fiorina was a member of the President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy, which produced a report for George W. Bush. She has appeared many times on TV such as in 2007 on Real Time with Bill Maher.
Politics
In 2008, Fiorina joined as a part of the Senator John McCain presidential campaign. In early 2008, Fiorina was referred to in media sources as a potential vice presidential candidate.
On March 7, 2008, Fiorina was named fundraising chairman for the Republican National Committee's "Victory" initiative. She was also a "point person" for the McCain campaign on issues related to business and economic affairs.Fiorina's severance package from Hewlett-Packard in 2005, was viewed by some as a political liability during the campaign.
On September 3, 2008, Fiorina addressed the Republican National Convention. Earlier that day, she defended the selection of Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate and said that Palin was being subjected to sexist attacks, a charge she repeated a few days later in response to one of the Saturday Night Live parodies of Sarah Palin.
In response to questions during a radio interview on September 15, 2008, she stated that Palin lacks the experience to run a major company like Hewlett-Packard, "[b]ut that's not what she's running for. Running a corporation is a different set of things." Fiorina later amended her comment, stating that none of the candidates on either ticket had the experience to run a major corporation. After media coverage of her comments, one of her scheduled appearances on behalf of the campaign was canceled, although Fiorina continued to chair the party's fundraising committee.
Senate candidacy
In February 2009, Fiorina spoke at the California State Republican Convention and on August 18, 2009, she announced that she had filed papers to form an exploratory committee to start exploring a candidacy for the position. On November 4, 2009, Fiorina formally announced her candidacy in the United States Senate election in California, 2010 in a bid to unseat incumbent Barbara Boxer. Fiorina's campaign in the Republican primary for that seat has received a number of endorsements, including one from Sarah Palin in the form of a Facebook note. Her campaign ad about Republican rival Tom Campbell featuring a "demon sheep" created international, mostly negative, publicity. After the ad went viral, the California Democratic Party created a parody of the ad depicting Fiorina herself as a demon sheep.
On June 8, 2010, Fiorina won the Republican nomination for Senate with over 50 percent of the vote, beating Campbell and State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore.
The Los Angeles Times research of public records indicated Fiorina had failed to vote in most elections. Fiorina responded: "I'm a lifelong registered Republican but I haven't always voted, and I will provide no excuse for it. You know, people die for the right to vote. And there are many, many Californians and Americans who exercise that civic duty on a regular basis. I didn't. Shame on me."
The LA Times has noted that Fiorina has conservative positions on certain social issues. She personally opposes abortion and, as a private citizen, voted for Proposition 8, which restricted the definition of marriage to opposite-sex couples, overturning a court ruling that same-sex couples have a right to marry. She has stated that she opposes litmus tests for Supreme Court nominations and does not favor a federal personhood amendment.[107] Fiorina has called climate change a "serious issue" but claims that the science surrounding global warming is inconclusive, saying "I think we should have the courage to examine the science on an ongoing basis."[108]In a campaign ad, Fiorina also likened Boxer's concerns over global warming to worrying about "the weather."[109] Fiorina opposes the cap and trade legislation supported by Senator Barbara Boxer, and thinks efforts to control greenhouse gases will cost 3 million jobs and are "massively destructive".
Personal life
Fiorina (then Cara Carleton Sneed) married Todd Bartlem, a Stanford classmate, in June 1977. She divorced him in 1984 over matters of money and for spending time away from her.
The next year, she married AT&T executive Frank Fiorina. It was the second marriage for both. She helped to raise her two stepdaughters Traci and Lori Ann. They attempted to have children together but, as Fiorina puts it: "That wasn't God's plan." She currently lives in Los Altos Hills, California and has a home in Washington, D.C.
On February 20, 2009 Fiorina was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent surgery at Stanford Hospital on March 2, 2009 followed by chemotherapy, which caused her to lose her hair, and radiation therapy. She has been given "an excellent prognosis for a full recovery." Upon announcing her campaign for the U.S. Senate seat held by Barbara Boxer, Fiorina stated "I have to say that after chemotherapy, Barbara Boxer just isn't that scary anymore."
Books
By Fiorina
Fiorina, Carly. Tough Choices: A Memoir. Portfolio Hardcover, 2006. (hardcover: ISBN 1-59184-133-X, abridged audiobook: ISBN 0-14305-907-6)
About Fiorina
Anders, George. Perfect Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of Hewlett-Packard. New York: Penguin Group, 2003. ISBN 1-59184-003-1.
Burrows, Peter. Backfire: Carly Fiorina's High-Stakes Battle for the Soul of Hewlett-Packard. Wiley, 2003. ISBN 0-47126-765-1.
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