Carly Fiorina is a business woman and a political candidate of America. She has gained fame for her career as the CEO of Hewlett-Placard (HP). She ran without success for US senate position. She also ran for Republican presidential nomination in vain. The presidential candidate Ted Cruz, in 2016, chose her as the vice presidential running partner.
Fiorina, the CEO of HP, is the first woman to run a top 20 company as ranked by Forbes. In the year 2002, she was involved in the world’s largest merger. In this merger, HP acquired its arch rival Compaq. This transaction made HP one of the largest sellers of computers.
HP eventually cut off its manpower. It has laid off around 30,000 employees working in US. On 2005, Fiorina was forced to walk out of HP, when the company lost half its value.
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Early Life
Fiorina was born on 6th September 1954, in Texas. Her father Joseph Tyree Sneed was a professor of University of Texas School of Law. Later he became the dean of Duke University of School of Law. Her mother was an abstract painter. She has come from English and German ancestry.
Fiorina went to Channing School, in London. Later she attended five different schools. One of them was in Ghana. In her early days of education she has considered herself to be an aspiring pianist. She has done her bachelor degree in philosophy and medieval history from Stanford University.
In 1980, she received a master degree in business administration, in marketing. In 1989, she got a master in science in management.
Career
After her study, she joined AT&T as management trainee. She sold telephone service to federal agencies. Later in the year 1990, she became the first female to serve as the vice president of the company. She took care of the company’s hardware and systems division.
In 1995, she led the operation for Lucent Technologies. Inc. Fiorina played a vital role in planning and implementing the initial public offering of company launch strategy of 1996. The strategy became one of the most successful one. Later that year she had been selected as the president of Lucent’s consumer product division.
In 1997, she got appointed as the group president of Lucent’s global service business. Her job was to oversee the marketing and the sales of the company. The same she led a $2.5 billion joint venture. She succeeded in adding more than 22,000 jobs and the revenue of the company increased from $19 billion to $38 billion.
In 1999, HP named her the CEO of the company. She became the first woman CEO of a Fortune 20 company. She received a much larger pay offer than those who preceded her.
In Sept 2001, she announced the purchase of PC maker Compaq. This is considered to be the largest merger of the technology world. The merger had cost HP $25 billion. Fiorina had many arguments with the board of directors. She even had to fight for the merger.
The merger initially was considered as a failure. However, later an analyzing team declared that the merger had been successful.
Carly Fiorina – Husband
She married Todd Bartlem, her Stanford classmate in 1977. They divorced in 1984. She married Frank Fiorina in 1985. It was a second marriage for the both of them Frank took early retirement to travel with his wife and support her in her career. She didn’t have children but looked after the two, daughters of Frank, Traci and Lori Ann, from his first marriage, as her own. Lori Ann died at the age of 35 (2009) battling depression, alcoholism, substance abuse and bulimia.
In 2009, Fiorina was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent chemotherapy. This has caused her to lose hair. Later she was given a full recovery report.
Carly Fiorina – Net Worth
Her net worth is reportedly $59 million.