Meg Whitman

Margaret "Meg" Whitman is an American business executive. She is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard.

Whitman served as an executive in The Walt Disney Company where she was vice president of strategic planning throughout the 1980s. In the 1990s, she served as an executive for DreamWorks, Procter & Gamble, and Hasbro. Whitman served as President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay from 1998 to 2008.

On February 10, 2009, Whitman announced she would run for governor of California in the 2010 election. Her campaign was largely self-funded.She was the fourth wealthiest woman in the state of California with a net worth of $1.3 billion in 2010. She spent more of her own money on this effort than any other self-funded political candidate in U.S. history and ultimately lost to Jerry Brown. Whitman spent $144 million from her own personal funds.

Beginning her career in 1979 as a brand manager at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, Ohio, Whitman later moved on to work as a consultant at Bain & Company's San Francisco office. She then rose through the ranks to achieve the position of senior Vice President.

Whitman became vice president of strategic planning at The Walt Disney Company in 1989. Two years later she joined the Stride Rite Corporation, before becoming president and CEO of Florists' Transworld Delivery in 1995.

As Hasbro's Playskool Division General Manager, she oversaw global management and marketing of two children's brands, Playskool and Mr. Potato Head starting in January 1997. She also imported the UK's children's television show Teletubbies into the U.S.

Whitman joined eBay on March 1998, when it had 30 employees and revenues of approximately $4 million. During her time as CEO, the company grew to approximately 15,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue by 2008. During Whitman's tenure as CEO, eBay completed the purchase of Skype for $4.1B in cash and stock in September 2005. In 2009, Skype was sold by eBay at a valuation of $2.75B. In 2011, Skype was bought by Microsoft for US$8.5B.

Whitman resigned as CEO of eBay in November 2007, but remained on the board and served as an advisor to new CEO John Donahoe until late 2008.

Whitman has received numerous awards and accolades for her work at eBay. On more than one occasion, she was named among the top five most powerful women by Fortune magazine. Harvard Business Review named her the eighth-best-performing CEO of the past decade and the Financial Times named her as one of the 50 faces that shaped the decade.

Whitman also served on the board of directors of the eBay Foundation, Procter & Gamble and DreamWorks SKG, until early 2009. She was appointed to the board of Goldman Sachs in October 2001 and then resigned in December 2002, amidst controversy that she had received shares in several public offerings managed by Goldman Sachs. In March 2011, she was appointed a part-time special adviser at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

She has also joined the boards of Zipcar and Teach for America, and re-joined the board of Procter & Gamble.

In January 2011, Whitman joined Hewlett-Packard's board of directors. She was named CEO on September 22, 2011.

Whitman founded a charitable foundation with husband Harsh on December 21, 2006, by donating to it 300,000 shares of eBay stock worth $9.4 million. By the end of its first year of operation, the Griffith R. Harsh IV and Margaret C Whitman Charitable Foundation had $46 million in assets and have disbursed $125,000 to charitable causes. Most of the money disbursed went to the Environmental Defense Fund.