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Margaret Cushing Whitman (born August 4, 1956) is an American business executive, diplomat, and politician serving as the United States ambassador to Kenya since 2022. Whitman was president and chief executive officer (CEO) of eBay from 1998 to 2008. Afterwards, she became president and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise from 2011 to 2015, during the company's major split. She then served as the CEO of Quibi from its launch in 2018 until its closure in 2020. A member of the Republican Party, she ran for governor of California but was defeated by former governor Jerry Brown in California's 2010 gubernatorial election. Whitman was a senior presidential campaign official for Republican Mitt Romney in both 2008 and 2012, although she supported Democrats Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in the 2016 presidential election and the 2020 presidential election, respectively. Whitman was an executive at The Walt Disney Company, where she was vice president of Strategic Planning throughout the 1980s. In the 1990s, she was an executive for DreamWorks, Procter & Gamble, and Hasbro. During Whitman's 10 years with eBay, she oversaw its expansion from 30 employees and $4 million in annual revenue, to more than 15,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue. In 2014, Whitman was named 20th in Forbes List of the 100 Most Powerful Women in the World. In 2008, Whitman was cited by The New York Times as among the women most likely to become the first female president of the United States. She ran for governor of California in 2010, winning the Republican primary. The fifth-wealthiest woman in California with a net worth of $1.3 billion in 2010, she spent, at the time, more of her own money on a single election than any other political candidate in American history. The $144 million of her own fortune she used for the race (the campaign spent $178.5 million in total, including money from donors) was surpassed only by Michael Bloomberg in the 2020 presidential election. Whitman was defeated by Democratic former Governor Jerry Brown in the 2010 California gubernatorial election, 54% to 41%. In December 2021, Whitman was nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as the United States Ambassador to Kenya. She was confirmed in July 2022 and took office the following month. Early life and education Whitman was born in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, the daughter of Margaret Cushing (née Goodhue) and Hendricks Hallett Whitman Jr. Her patrilineal great-great-great-grandfather, Elnathan Whitman, was a member of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly. Through her father, Whitman is also a great-great-granddaughter of U.S. Senator Charles B. Farwell, of Illinois. On her mother's side, she is a great-granddaughter of historian and jurist Munroe Smith and a great-great-granddaughter of General Henry S. Huidekoper. Her paternal grandmother, born Adelaide Chatfield-Taylor, was the daughter of writer Hobart Chatfield-Taylor and his wife, Rose Farwell Chatfield-Taylor, and the sister of economist Wayne Chatfield-Taylor. Whitman attended Cold Spring Harbor High School in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, graduating after three years in 1974. In her memoirs, she says she was in the top 10 of her class. She wanted to be a doctor, so she studied math and science at Princeton University. However, after spending a summer selling advertisements for the magazine Business Today, she changed over to the study of economics. She graduated with an A.B. in economics with honors from Princeton University in 1977 after completing an 83-page-long senior thesis titled "The Marketing of American Consumer Products in Western Europe." Whitman then obtained an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1979. Whitman is married to Griffith Harsh IV, Chair of Neurosurgery at the University of California, Davis, previously at Stanford University Medical Center. They have two sons, Griffith Harsh V and William Harsh, both of whom had college careers marred by violent behavior. Whitman has lived in Atherton, California, since March 1998. Whitman College, a residential college completed in 2007 at Princeton University, was named for Meg Whitman following her $30 million donation. Career Early work Whitman began 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. She 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, starting in January 1997, she oversaw global management and marketing of two children's brands, Playskool and Mr. Potato Head. She also imported the UK's children's television show Teletubbies into the U.S. eBay Whitman joined eBay in March 1998, when it had 30 employees and annual revenues of approximately $4 million. Despite initially not wanting to take on the role, during her time as CEO, through 2008, the company grew to approximately 15,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue. Originally, when Whitman joined eBay, she found the website as a simple black and white webpage using the Courier typeface. On her first day, the site crashed for eight hours. She believed the site to be confusing and began by building a new executive team. Whitman organized the company by splitting it into 23 business categories. She then assigned executives to each, including some 35,000 subcategories. In 2002, soon after its initial public offering, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay valued at $1.5 billion. In 2004, Whitman made several key changes in her management team. Jeff Jordan took over PayPal, Matt Bannick took over international operations, and Bill Cobb took over U.S. operations, which has the colorful U.S. logo, while each international site has unique branding. Whitman picked John J. Donahoe for eBay in March 2005 as president of eBay Marketplaces, responsible for all elements of eBay's global ecommerce businesses. During Whitman's tenure as CEO, eBay completed the purchase of Skype for $4.1B in cash and stock in September 2005. eBay later admitted that it had overpaid and, in 2009, eBay sold Skype to a group of investors led by Silver Lake Partners at a valuation of $2.75B. In 2011, after the first papers were filed for a possible IPO, Microsoft purchased Skype for US$8.5B. In June 2007, while preparing for an interview with Reuters, Whitman allegedly shoved her subordinate, communications employee Young Mi Kim. Of the incident, Whitman related, "In any high-pressure working environment, tensions can surface." Kim also stated, "Yes, we had an unfortunate incident, but we resolved it in a way that speaks well for her and for eBay." The matter was resolved after a $200,000 settlement. Whitman resigned as CEO of eBay in November 200.... Discover the Meg Files popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Meg Files books.