Meg Whitman is a former political candidate and American corporate entrepreneur. Whitman is on the boards of directors for both Procter & Gamble and General Motors.
Throughout the 1980s, Whitman was an executive with The Walt Disney Company, where she served as vice president of Strategic Planning. She was an executive for DreamWorks, Procter & Gamble, and Hasbro in the 1990s.
Bio
| Age: | 66 |
| Born: | August 4, 1956 |
| Country of Origin: | United States of America |
| Source of Wealth: | Executive |
Childhood and Education
Margaret Whitman was born to Hendricks Jr. and Margaret on August 4, 1956, in Huntington, New York. She attended Cold Spring Harbor High School as an adolescent and graduated in 1974.
Whitman subsequently attended Princeton University with the intention of becoming a physician; but, after spending the summer selling advertisements for Business Today magazine, she changed her major to economics.
After receiving her Bachelor of Arts from Princeton in 1977, Whitman attended Harvard Business School to acquire her Master of Business Administration.
Career Beginnings
After graduating from Harvard in 1979, Whitman began her work with Procter & Gamble as a brand manager. After this, she joined Bain & Company as a consultant and was eventually promoted to senior vice president.
Whitman became vice president of strategic planning for the Walt Disney Company in 1989. She then worked for the Stride Rite Corporation for two years until becoming president and CEO of Florists’ Transworld Delivery in 1995.
In 1997, Whitman was appointed general manager of Hasbro’s Playskool Division. She imported the British children’s television show “Teletubbies” to the United States as part of her duties in that capacity.
eBay
In 1998, Whitman became the CEO of eBay, which at the time had only 30 workers and approximately $4 million in annual revenue. During her nearly ten-year tenure at eBay, the firm grew to over 15,000 people and $8 billion in yearly revenue.
To do this, Whitman created a new leadership team and assigned executives to each of the company’s 23 business groups. eBay went public and acquires PayPal in 2002.
Three years later, the corporation acquired Skype for $4 billion before selling it to investors for approximately $2.75 billion. Although Whitman departed as CEO of eBay in late 2007, she remained on the board and advised John Donahoe, the new CEO, until 2008.
Hewlett-Packard
In January of 2011, Whitman joined the board of directors of the Hewlett-Packard Company; in September, she was named the company’s chief executive officer. In her first year as CEO, she refocused the company’s research and development division and recommitted HP to the PC industry.
However, problems dogged Whitman in the years that followed. Bloomberg L.P. labeled her one of the most “underachieving” CEOs in 2013 due to HP’s drastically underperforming stock. Later, in 2017, Whitman resigned as board chair while retaining his position as CEO. In February of 2018, she resigned from the latter role.
Quibi
Whitman served as the CEO of the short-form video streaming platform Quibi from its establishment in the summer of 2018 until its official launch in 2020.
Due to its failure to attract members, the company considered acquisition or sale five months after its start. Quibi was shut down in December of 2020, and its content catalog was acquired by Roku in early 2021.
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Board Nominations
Whitman has been on the board of directors of various firms, including DreamWorks, Procter & Gamble, the eBay Foundation, Zipcar, and SurveyMonkey.
She also served on the board of Goldman Sachs but left after 14 months when it was disclosed that she had acquired stock in a number of the company’s public offerings.
Political Profession
In 2008, Whitman made her first significant entry into politics by joining the national finance team of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. After Romney withdrew from the race, Whitman became co-chair of John McCain’s national campaign.
Later, in 2016, she served as co-chair of Chris Christie’s presidential campaign’s finance committee; however, after he pulled out, she endorsed Hillary Clinton.
Whitman ran for governor of California in 2010, in addition to helping on presidential campaigns. She spent an unprecedented $144 million on her own campaign.
Whitman’s campaign program highlighted job growth, a reduction in state government spending, and reform of K-12 education. The race was ultimately won by Jerry Brown.
Later, in December 2021, President Joe Biden proposed Whitman become the US ambassador to Kenya.
What is the Net Worth of Meg Whitman?
American business entrepreneur Meg Whitman has a net worth of $3.5 billion. Meg Whitman has held executive positions at several large corporations.
She was the president and chief executive officer of eBay and the Hewlett-Packard Company, the chief executive officer of Quibi, and an executive at Walt Disney, DreamWorks, Hasbro, and Procter & Gamble. In addition to her business achievements, Whitman ran for California governor in 2010.
Personal Life and Generosity
Whitman wed Griffith R. Harsh IV, chair of neurosurgery at the University of California Davis, in 1980. The pair has two children together and lives in Atherton, California.
In 2006, Whitman and her husband established the Griffith R. Harsh IV and Margaret C. Whitman Charitable Foundation.
In 2007, its first year of existence, it contributed approximately $125,000 to charity, the majority of which went to the Environmental Defense Fund. Additionally, $4 million was placed in offshore hedge funds.