Carly Fiorina: Difference between revisions

Carly Fiorina
Born	Cara Carleton Sneed (1954-09-06) September 6, 1954 (age 70) Austin, Texas
Education	Stanford University University of California, Los Angeles (did not graduate) University of Maryland, College Park Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Occupation(s)	Business Executive, Politician
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Todd Bartlem (1977-1984, div.) Frank Fiorina (1985-present)
Website	carlyfiorina.com

Cara Carleton "Carly" Fiorina (born Cara Carleton Sneed on September 6, 1954) is an American businesswoman and a top female executive. Fiorina served as chief executive officer at Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005. Prior to joining Hewlett-Packard, Fiorina served as an executive vice president at AT&T, and helped to coordinate the spinoff and initial public offering of Lucent. She was considered one of the most powerful women in business in the late 1990's and the early 2000's.

Under Fiorina's leadership, HP completed the process of spinning off its 1940's founding tradition of electronic scientific equipment manufacturing into Agilent Technologies and then HP completed a controversial merger with rival PC maker Compaq in 2002. A year after joining Hewlett-Packard, Fiorina became the company's chairman of the board but that same board forced Fiorina to resign from the company in 2005.

In 2008, Fiorina served for a limited period of time as a top economic advisor to Republican presidential candidate John McCain. She now sits on the boards of several major business organzations. In September of 2009, a website appeared which indicated that Fiorina would likely run for the Republican nomination for United States Senate in California.

Cara Carleton Sneed is of Italian descent. She was born in Austin, Texas to Joseph Tyree Sneed III, a law school professor and dean, and later federal judge, and Madelon Juergens Sneed, a portrait and abstract artist. She attended Charles E. Jordan High School in Durham, North Carolina for her senior year; the family frequently relocated during this time.

Fiorina received a Bachelor of Arts degree 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.

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.

Fiorina 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;^[1] she played a key role in planning and implementing the 1996 initial public offering of stock and company launch strategy.^[2][3]

Later in 1996, Fiorina was appointed president of Lucent's consumer products business, reporting to Rich McGinn, president and chief operating officer.^[4] In 1997, she was appointed chairman of Lucent's consumer communications joint venture with Philips consumer communications.^[5] 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.^[6]

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.^{[7][8][9][10][11][12][13]}

In July 1999, Hewlett-Packard Company named Fiorina chief executive officer succeeding Lewis Platt and prevailing over the internal candidate Ann Livermore.^[14] She became the first woman to lead a Fortune 20 company.^[15] 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 successful 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.^[16] 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.^[17] 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 . He launched a proxy fight against Fiorina's efforts, but that failed.^[18][19] The Compaq merger created the world's largest personal computer manufacturer by units shipped^[20] for a time,^[21] a position the company regained shortly after Fiorina left the company^[22].

Fiorina presented herself as a realist as to the matter of the effects of globalization. She has been a strong proponent, along with other technology executives, of the expansion of the H-1B visa program.^[23] 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."^[24][25][26] 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.^[27] 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."^[28]

Forina was forced out of HP in 2005 after its stock price had fallen in value by half. 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.^[29] The board proposed a plan to shift her authority to HP division heads, which Fiorina resisted.^[30] A week after the meeting, the confidential plan was leaked to the Wall Street Journal.^[31] Less than a month later, board brought back in Tom Perkins and forced Fiorina to resign as chairman and chief executive officer of the company.^[32] The company's stock jumped on news of Fiorina's departure.^[33] Under the company's agreement with Fiorina which was characterized as a golden parachute by some, she was paid slightly more than twenty million dollars in severance.^[34] When Fiorina became CEO in July, 1999, HP's stock price was $52 per share, and when she left 5 years later in February, 2005, it was $21 per share—a loss of over 60% of the stock's value.^[35] During this same time period, HP competitor Dell's stock price increased from $37 to $40 per share.^[36][37]

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 Dunn continued along these lines to determine which board member(s) has been leaking information to the media. The methods used in this later phase of their investigations led to the HP spying scandal and Dunn was soon succeeded by Mark Hurd.^[38][39]

Outside judgments on Fiorina's tenure at HP are mixed at best. In 2008, Infoworld grouped her with a list of products and ideas as flops, declaring her to be the "anti-Steve Jobs" as a destroyer of the goodwill of American engineers and as one who alienated existing customers.^[40] 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.^[16] In April 2009, the business magazine web site Condé Nast Portfolio listed Fiorina as one of the "The 20 Worst American CEOs of all time," characterizing the HP-Compaq merger as widely regarded as a failure, and citing the halving of HP's stock value under Fiorina's tenure.^[41][42]

After her ouster 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.^[43][44][45] 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.^{[46] [47][48] [49]}

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."^[50]

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.^[51] 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. In the book, she singles out Cooltown with the line "I could hardly contain my delight and excitement at seeing Cool Town."^[52] Fiorina signed on with the Fox Business Network to become a business commentator on the network.^[53] 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."^[54]

In 2008, Fiorina joined the Senator John McCain for 2008 presidential elections and she quickly rose within his organization. In early 2008, Fiorina was referred to in media sources as a potential Vice President in a McCain administration.^[55] At an economic round-table with the senator in January 2008, Fiorina praised McCain, claiming that: "John McCain is a man who understands what the role of government should be, and what the role of government should not be."^[56] On March 7, 2008, Fiorina was named "Chair of Victory, 2008", an RNC-coordinated group to raise money and conduct get-out-the-vote activities, by the Republican National Committee. She stated then that she would additionally be a point person for the McCain campaign as related to business and economic affairs, as well as publicly advocating the Republican Party.^[57] Fiorina's 2005 golden parachute was viewed by many as a political liability during the campaign.^{[58] [59] [60]}

After months of excellent work, Fiorina abruptly discredited herself as a politician and was promptly ousted from the McCain 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 declared 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.^[61][62][63] Fiorina defended Sarah Palin against the charge of lack of experience, describing her as "a person of great accomplishment". In a television interview she complained that "They were defining Hillary Clinton as very substantive and Sarah Palin as totally superficial,"^[64] 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, including John McCain, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, had the experience to run a major corporation.^[65][66][67] The McCain campaign was "furious" with Fiorina's statements. Her further appearances were canceled and she was eliminated from the campaign.^{[68][69] [70][71][72]} Within the year, Palin resigned as governor and contracted for her much-anticipated memoir with rumors that she was contemplating a career as host of her own talk show.

Fiorina is considering running in the United States Senate election in California, 2010. If she launches a campaign, she will be running against Barbara Boxer. Her campaign Facebook page identifies her political views as a conservative. She spoke at the California State Republican Convention in February 2009 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. In September 2009, she started a widely ridiculed campaign website which included the juxtaposition of a photo of Boxer caught in a moment of intense scowling and a smiling Fiorina as well as other simplistic and hackneyed pairings of stock photography more typical of American marketing than American politics.^{[73][74][75][76]}

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.^[77] 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."^[78][79][80] She currently lives in Los Altos Hills, California and has a home in Washington, D.C..

On March 2, 2009, Fiorina underwent surgery for breast cancer at Stanford Hospital. She had been diagnosed on February 20 and has been given "an excellent prognosis for a full recovery."^[81][82]

• Fiorina, Carly. Tough Choices: A Memoir. Portfolio Hardcover, 2006. (hardcover: ISBN 1-59184-133-X, abridged audiobook: ISBN 0-14305-907-6)

• 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.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Carly Fiorina.

Wikiquote has quotations related to Carly Fiorina.

• Carly Fiorina Enterprises
• Carly For California

• Fiorina's keynote speech, given at MIT (October 11, 2002)
• Video timeline of tenure, compiled by CNET (February 10, 2005)
• Interview with Leslie Stahl, from 60 Minutes (October 8, 2006)
• Fiorina interview, with Forbes (October 11, 2006)
• Discussion of Tough Choices, from FORA.tv (October 19, 2006)
• Management and leadership series, from Stanford University (April 5, 2007)
• Stanford interview, from iinnovate (May 16, 2007)