Meg Whitman was born in 1956 on Long Island, New York in Oyster Bay, an affluent area that was one of the inspirational settings for F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Great Gatsby." Both of her parents came from families tied to Boston's elite, known as the "Boston Brahmins."
Both of her parents served in World War II. Her mom, Margaret Whitman Sr., was an airplane and truck mechanic for the Red Cross in New Guinea.
Whitman was born with a birth defect called dysplasia; her left hip lacked a socket, discovered as a newborn. She was strapped into a stiff metal brace with leather straps until age 3, when it was removed. It worked! She could walk and run normally.
Whitman was an avid athlete as a child playing tennis, figure skating, lacrosse, competitive swimming, and she was a great student. At first, she wanted to be a doctor and went Princeton to study medicine. While there, however, she changed her mind and her major to economics. She also earned an MBA from Harvard.
Whitman's sister, Anne, struggled with mental illness brought on by a postpartum depression psychosis. The illness cost Anne her job. Anne eventually went on to found several mental health organizations, and Whitman proudly talked about her sister in her book, "The Power of Many."
Whitman began her career at P&G in the Cincinnati office in 1979. During training, she discovered that the company wouldn't issue credit cards to its women trainees because the company didn’t think it was safe for women to travel alone. She stood up against the policy and got P&G to change it.
Today, Whitman is on the board of directors at P&G.
Whitman moved on to toy company Hasbro where she was responsible for the company's most precious toy: Mr. Potato Head, one of the oldest continuously produced children's toys, invented in 1952. Whitman led Hasbro's Playskool division, which had 600 employees and $600 million in annual sales under her.
At Hasbro, Whitman brought the UK's children's television show "Teletubbies" into the United States. Teletubbies was a very weird kids' show that ran from 1998 through 2008, if you include reruns.
Whitman had to be convinced to leave her high-profile role at Hasbro to take the CEO job at eBay.
When Whitman joined eBay in 1998, it had 30 employees and $4 million in revenue. When she left in 2008, it had about 15,000 employees and $8 billion in revenue, and she was a billionaire.
Whitman was known for being a demanding boss at eBay. There was a widely reported story that Whitman allegedly shoved one of her employees, then reportedly paid the employee a $200,000 settlement over the matter, after which both of them patched up their differences.
Meg Whitman is married to brain surgeon and Rhode Scholar Dr. Griffith R. Harsh IV, a professor of neurosurgery at Stanford. She met him at when she was a sophomore at Princeton but they didn't date until years later after she invited him to her sister's wedding and he forgot and blew her off. He then called her to apologize, and ask her out. What she didn't tell him at the time was that her sister had also invited five other attractive, eligible men as potential dates for Meg at her wedding.
Whitman and Harsh have two sons, Griff Harsh V, and younger brother William Harsh. Both of her sons went to Princeton and both boys, especially Griff V, had reputations as billionaire bad boys while at Princeton. Whitman donated $30 million to Princeton in 2002, the place where she met her husband, and the Whitman College residence is named for her.
Whitman is an avid fly fisherwoman. When her oldest son was 16, he fell in love with fly fishing and got Whitman into it too. She used to buy a lot of fly-fishing equipment on eBay when she was CEO there.
Whitman lives in the exclusive Atherton, Calif., neighborhood in a white clapboard colonial home. Mark Hurd, Eric Schmidt, and Sheryl Sandberg have all owned homes there.
Whitman has a net worth these days of about $2 billion. She has not signed Bill Gates' Giving Pledge, vowing to give away most of her wealth to charity, but her family does have its own charitable foundation, with roughly roughly $108 million in assets that donates to health, education, and environment causes.
Whitman famously ran for California governor on the Republican ticket in 2010 and lost to Jerry Brown. She spent more of her own money on the race than any other self-funded political candidate in U.S. history at the time — $144 million of her own out of the $178.5 million raised including donors.
Whitman credits her political campaign for teaching her all kinds of skills about communicating with people while being CEO. She calls politics a "very tough business."
Whitman joined HP's board in January 2011, when Leo Apotheker was CEO. Later that year, HP paid $11 billion for Autonomy which turned into a huge disaster for the company. HP dismissed Apotheker and asked Whitman to become CEO.
Whitman's first few years at HP meant delivering one big bit of bad news after another. She had to write off most of the Autonomy acquisition, and also did big write-downs on other acquisitions like EDS and Compaq. She also announced a massive layoff plan that began in 2012, targeting 25,000 employees and is still going, having since spiraled to 80,000.
After rumored talks to acquire EMC failed, Whitman decided to take the drastic measure of splitting HP into two companies. Each divided company will still be huge, Fortune 50 companies. The split will take place November 1.
Meg Whitman will remain CEO of the new HP company, HP Enterprise, and she will be chairman of the other, HP Inc.
Last year, Whitman earned total compensation of over $19 million as the leader of HP, landing her as No. 7 on Fortune's list of highest paid women and No. 7 on Fortune's 2015 list of the world's most powerful women.
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