Carly Fiorina is a US business leader, political figure, and philanthropist.
It should give hope and inspiration to all the young people striving to reach the top, knowing that Carly Fiorina started her journey as a humble secretary.
Fortune Magazine named her the most powerful woman in the U.S. business five years in a row.
She says, " I spend most of my time greeting visitors, answering calls, typing memos, but I am really committed to my job, arriving early, and leaving late."
Born in 1954 in Austin, her family moved often, and she visited different regions due to her father's job. She attended her school in Ghana, the UK, and the US states of California and North Carolina.
Fiorina completed her graduation from Stanford University in 1976 with a bachelor's degree in Medieval History and Philosophy. While attending law school at the University of California got dropped out after completing one semester. She, later on, completed her studies at the University of Maryland in 1980 (M.B.A.) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1989 (M.S.).
She started her entry-level job at AT&T Corporation, and after ten years, she was named the company's first female officer. At the age of 40, she became the head of AT&T's North American operations. It was also a while at AT&T that she met her husband Frank Fiorina (AT&T Executive) and got married in 1985.
She successfully engineered AT&T's research division spin-off Lucent Technologies Inc. in 1996. She was promoted to president of Lucent's Global Service Provider Business after two years of her hard work in operations.
In 1999, Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) announced that she would become its new CEO - the first outsider to lead HP in 60 years of its history. However, Fiorina encountered much resistance from her employees as she updated the traditional working system.
Her plan to merge HP with Compaq Computer Corporation was not much success after the deal failed to generate the expected profits, and in 2005 she was forced to resign as CEO.
Fiorina prevailed to merge the HP and Compaq Computer Corporation with the support of shareholders by a slim margin of 51.4% of the votes cast.
Under her leadership, costs were reduced, and 30,000 jobs were removed combined from HP and Compaq's workforce. Further, 80,000 employees took pay cuts at a business.
After resigning from HP, she served as a consultant to the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign of late John McCain. In June 2010, Fiorina secured nominating victory in the Republican primary but was defeated in the general election against Barbara Boxer.
Fiorina remained politically active founding a political action committee dedicated to recruiting female voters and remained its chairman.
In 2015, Fiorina announced about entering the U.S. presidential election race of 2016. She got strong momentum in the race after a strong debate of August 2015, but she was unable to maintain the support suspended her campaign in February 2016. And unfortunately, she lost the presidential race to Donald Trump.