Carly Fiorina

Former CEO of Hewlett-Packard

• Born: September 6, 1954
• Place of Birth: Austin, Texas

• Primary Field: Business and commerce
• Specialty: Management, executives, and investors
• Primary Company/Organization: Hewlett-Packard

Introduction

Former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina served in key leadership positions at Lucent Technologies and the Hewlett-Packard Company. While not all of her strategies proved successful, her aggressive and expansion-oriented management of both corporations kept these organizations, and Fiorina herself, in the headlines. After leaving corporate management, Fiorina served as an adviser to Republican presidential nominee John McCain in 2008, staged an unsuccessful run for the US Senate as the 2010 Republican candidate for that office in California, and campaigned unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for president in 2015–2016.

Early Life

On September 6, 1954, Fiorina was born Cara Carleton Sneed in Austin, Texas. Fiorina's parents were Joseph Tyree Sneed III and Madelon Montross Juergens. Joseph served as a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, Cornell University Law School, and Stanford Law School before becoming dean of the Duke University School of Law. Appointed in 1973 as a Deputy US Attorney General, he was nominated in the same year by President Richard Nixon to serve as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Madelon, an artist of portraits and abstract works, was known for her use of bold strokes and vibrant colors. Fiorina moved frequently with her parents, as mandated by her father's profession, but the family, which included Fiorina's brother and sister, was close. Fiorina attended a variety of different schools, including the Channing School in London, before graduating from Charles E. Jordan High School in Durham, North Carolina. After high school, Fiorina entered Stanford University, where she studied medieval history and philosophy. During her college career, Fiorina worked a variety of summer jobs, including stints at a hair salon and as a secretary for Kelly Services. She graduated with a bachelor's degree from Stanford in 1976.

After graduating, Fiorina enrolled in the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law, but she dropped out during her first year. She then found employment working as a receptionist for a Los Angeles real estate firm, Marcus and Millichamp, eventually moving up to serve as a broker. In 1977, she and her first husband, Todd Bartlem, were married. Fiorina next moved to Italy, where she taught English, returning to the United States so that she could enter the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, from which she received a master's in business administration (MBA) with a concentration in marketing in 1980. Fiorina then joined American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) as a management trainee. After her marriage with Bartlem dissolved, Fiorina married her current husband, Frank Fiorina, in 1985. During the late 1980s, she was granted a Sloan fellowship, a program funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and designed to permit mid-career professionals to obtain a master's degree in general management and leadership. With the aid of that fellowship, Fiorina earned a master's degree in leadership from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1989. While at AT&T, Fiorina rose from her management trainee position to become a senior vice president responsible for the company's hardware and systems division.

Life's Work

During the mid-1990s, AT&T began to realize that its equipment sales were impeded because rivals for the provision of telecommunications services were reluctant to purchase apparatus from their competitor. As a result, AT&T made the decision to spin off its equipment and technology divisions, which included the award-winning Bell Laboratories. Reporting to the chief executive officer (CEO) of what was to become Lucent Technologies, Fiorina helped to plan and implement Lucent's 1996 initial public offering (IPO). As a result of her success in this role, Fiorina was made president of Lucent's consumer products division, reporting directly to Rich McGinn, the company's president and chief operating officer. The following year, Fiorina was assigned the chairmanship of a consumer communications joint venture with Royal Philips Electronics (Philips). Also in 1997, Fiorina was made president of Lucent's global service provider group. With the technology boom experienced during the 1990s, Lucent's stock value soared; its equipment sales were seen as a vital part of the dot-com revolution.

During the late 1990s, a great deal of media attention was given to the increasing role played by women at large multinational corporations. Fiorina was the focus of much of this media attention, named “the most powerful woman in business” by Fortune magazine's inaugural listing of such leaders in 1998. While the concept of a metaphorical glass ceiling that hindered women's promotions within large organizations had been discussed for years, Fiorina was touted by many as the first woman to have broken through that barrier. When the Hewlett-Packard Company, a giant in computer hardware and software, went looking for a chairman and CEO to succeed Lewis E. Platt, Fiorina was hired in 1999 over a variety of other candidates, including Hewlett-Packard insider Ann Livermore. This move made Fiorina the first female CEO of a Dow-Jones 30 corporation.

Fiorina was hired in part because it was perceived that she would take a more aggressive stance than Platt, whose low-key management style focused on promoting progressive values and long-term results. In contrast to Platt, who wore thick glasses, flew coach on business trips, and ate in the company cafeteria, Fiorina was initially embraced by investors and the media for her “rock star” approach to leadership. Fiorina was a highly visible CEO and immediately began to reorganize Hewlett-Packard upon taking over in mid-1999. In a spin-off of all Hewlett-Packard businesses that were not related to computers, imaging, or storage, these endeavors were grouped into a new company, Agilent Technologies. Agilent was offered to the public through an IPO, making it an $8 billion corporation with more than forty-five thousand. Although this move had been planned before she was made CEO, Fiorina was praised for executing what was, at that time, Silicon Valley's largest IPO.

Fiorina had the misfortune of presiding over Hewlett-Packard during the dot-com collapse of 2000–2001, when many technology and Internet firms failed or lost much of their value. Despite this, in September 2001 Fiorina announced plans to merge Hewlett-Packard with smaller manufacturer Compaq Computer Corporation. The $25 billion proposed purchase, coming as it did on the heels of Dell, Inc.'s overtaking Compaq as the largest supplier of personal computer (PC) systems, was highly controversial. Many past and present Hewlett-Packard executives opposed the merger, which led to a proxy battle for control of the corporation. Those opposed to Hewlett-Packard's merger with Compaq included Walter Hewlett and David Packard (sons of the company's founders), the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), and the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP). Those opposed to the merger felt that Compaq and Hewlett-Packard had different and incongruent cultures, that the PC market was low-margin and risky, and that the value of Hewlett-Packard shares would be diluted. Despite this opposition, the merger was approved by shareholder vote in 2002.

During the three years after the Hewlett-Packard–Compaq merger, Fiorina laid off thousands of workers, the company's stock price declined, and profits were stagnant. Although the merger made the company the world's largest producer of PCs, it lost that title in 2003 because of declining sales (although it regained that position in 2006). Fiorina saw the transfer of some Hewlett-Packard jobs to overseas locations and was a strong backer of expanding the HB-1 visa program, which permits US employers to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations, such as programming. In early 2005, the Hewlett-Packard board of directors met with Fiorina to discuss ways of improving the company's operations. Chief among the board's suggestions was shifting some of Fiorina's responsibilities to various division leaders. Fiorina resisted these changes, and a month later the Hewlett-Packard board replaced Fiorina temporarily with Thomas Perkins, the former head of Hewlett-Packard's research division and past chairman of Tandem Computers. Patricia Dunn was later named Fiorina's permanent replacement. Fiorina received a severance package in excess of $20 million. Under Fiorina's leadership, Hewlett-Packard had doubled its annual revenues to $88 billion and had generated eleven patents per day.

After leaving Hewlett-Packard, Fiorina became a commentator on Fox Business Network, an American cable channel devoted to economic news. In 2008, she acted as an adviser to Senator John McCain's presidential campaign, providing counsel on matters related to business and technology. Fiorina became chair of a national Republican fund-raising campaign and spoke at the party's national convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota. After this experience, Fiorina announced in November 2009 that she would be seeking the Republican nomination for the US Senate seat held by California's Barbara Boxer. Running what was often criticized as a very negative campaign, Fiorina defeated Republican rivals Tom Campbell and Chuck DeVore to win more than 50 percent of the vote, and her party's nomination, on June 8, 2010. During the campaign against Boxer, Fiorina took a conservative stance on many social issues—for example, opposing abortion and supporting California Proposition 8, which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Despite her vigorous efforts, Boxer defeated Fiorina in the election, winning 52 percent of the vote to Fiorina's 42 percent.

In May 2015, at the same time that she released her book Rising to the Challenge: My Leadership Journey, Fiorina formally announced that she would be entering the 2016 presidential campaign for the Republican nomination. Positioning herself as a more conservative candidate with years of experience working in the private sector, she set herself up as the Republican who could best directly confront Hillary Rodham Clinton, one of two Democratic challengers. She cited her ability to take the lead and make tough decisions at crucial times under pressure as one of her best assets for the presidency, and she began immediately taking pointed shots at Clinton; however, from the beginning, polls showed that she did not have a great amount of public support for the run. While she did manage to attract more interest following the first Republican debate, she continued losing ground as her Republican rivals took stronger stances on significant issues. Ultimately, she announced in February 2016 that she was pulling out of the campaign after performing poorly in votes in New Hampshire and Iowa. By April, former rival Republican Ted Cruz selected Fiorina as his vice presidential running mate, a choice that was seen as quite controversial by political commentators. Though this partnership promised a new opportunity to remain in the race, Cruz would also be forced to renounce his bid for nomination in early May after failing to overcome Donald Trump's lead. In 2020, she endorsed Joe Biden's campaign.

Fiorina has also written a number of books. Her memoir Tough Choices (2006), outlines her journey as a business woman in the United States. Rising to the Challenge (2015) offers guidance as Fiorina shares her journey in leadership. Her 2019 self-help book Find Your Way: Unleash Your Power and Highest Potential, offers advice for a well-lived life.

Personal Life

Shortly after graduating from Stanford, Fiorina (then Cara Sneed) married former classmate Todd Bartlem, a marriage that ended in divorce in 1984. The following year, Fiorina married fellow AT&T executive Frank Fiorina, who had also been married before. Although she became stepmother to Frank's two daughters, Fiorina and her husband were unable to have children together. Frank retired in 1998 to help his wife focus on her career. Diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009, Fiorina underwent a double mastectomy and, after radiation and chemotherapy, was declared cancer-free. Fiorina and her husband live in Los Altos Hills, California.

Fiorina has long been interested in education. While at Hewlett-Packard, she helped that company launch its Technology for Teaching program, which resulted in more than $10 million in grants annually being given to classrooms from kindergarten through the college level. A fan of popular music, while at Hewlett-Packard Fiorina also engaged such celebrities as Sheryl Crow, Gwen Stefani, and U2's The Edge (David Howell Evans) to endorse Hewlett-Packard products.

Bibliography

Anders, George. Perfect Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of Hewlett-Packard. Portfolio, 2003.

Burrows, Peter. Backfire: Carly Fiorina's High-Stakes Battle for the Soul of Hewlett-Packard. Wiley, 2003.

"Carly Fiorina's journey from secretary to CEO." BBC, www.bbc.com/news/business-52820298. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.

Chozick, Amy. "Carly Fiorina Announces 2016 Presidential Bid, Citing Years Leading Hewlett-Packard." New York Times, 4 May 2015. www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/us/politics/carly-fiorina-2016-presidential-bid.html. Accessed 17 Oct. 2024.

Fiorina, Carly. Rising to the Challenge: My Leadership Journey. Sentinel, 2015.

Fiorina, Carly. Tough Choices: A Memoir. Portfolio, 2014.

House, Charles, and Raymond Price. The HP Phenomenon: Innovation and Business Transformation. Stanford UP, 2020.

Malone, Michael S. Bill and Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World's Greatest Company. Portfolio, 2007.