Born on 4 August 1956, Meg Cushing Whiteman is an American and a native of Cold Spring Harbour, Long Island New York. She is a political candidate, and currently the President and Chief Executive of Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and doubles as the Chairperson of HP Inc.
So how rich is Meg Whiteman? As of early 2016, Meg Whiteman’s net worth is estimated at $2.1 billion, which makes her the wealthiest woman in IT. Her fortune has been accrued from her tech businesses and and executive positions, and shares in companies.
Meg Whiteman was educated at Cold Spring Harbor High School after three years education in 1974. With her dream to become a doctor, Whiteman studied mathematics and science at Princeton University however, after a summer break she decided to switch to economics and in 1977, graduated with BA in Economics with honors. Meg then enrolled at Harvard Business School, and subsequently graduated with an MBA in 1979. She then started her career as a brand manager for Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1979. She later joined Bain and Company in San Francisco and became a senior vice president after rising through the ranks. Whitman also held high positions and has served on the boards of several companies, including The Walt Disney Company, Stride Rite Corporation, and Florist Transworld Delivery among others before moving into technology. These positions were the start of her net worth rising.
Meg Whitman Net Worth $2.1 Billion
In March 1998 she entered the tech world by joining eBay. During her term, she ensured strategic change which led to employees rising from 30 to 15,000 and revenue from $4 million to $8 billion, and eBay purchasing Skype for $4.1 million in September 2005 which she later admitted was over paid for and later sold to Silver Lake Partners at an estimated downward price of $2.75 billion in 2009. She resigned as CEO of eBay in November 2007 but continued to serve as a board member. eBay was the game changer for Meg, since it was there that she made her name even though she initially turned down the offer. These were strong contributions to her net worth.
Meg joined the board of directors of Hewlett-Packard in January 2011 and was subsequently named the CEO in September. Her main focus was to restructure and reintroduce the firm to its PC business, and also introduce cloud services during a period where the company’s turnover was in free fall. However, her net worth continued to rise.
Meg Whitman’s political activism started when she joined Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2008. She then joined John McCain’s campaign after Romney stepped out of the race. In February 2009, Meg announced her ambition to run for the California governorship on the ticket of the Republican party in the 2010 election. She is known for investing heavily in self-funding her own campaign, however, she lost to Jerry Brown.
In 2008 Meg Whiteman was inducted into the US Business Hall of Fame and has won numerous awards. She has had a residential college at Princeton University named after her.
In her personal life, she founded a charity foundation with her husband in 2006. Meg Whiteman has been married to Griffith Harsh IV since 1980, and they have two sons.
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