Margaret Cushing Whitman is an American business executive, political activist, and philanthropist. She is the CEO of Quibi, and serves on the boards of Procter & Gamble and Dropbox. Whitman previously served as president and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Whitman was a senior member of Mitt Romney's presidential campaigns in both 2008 and 2012 and ran for governor of California as a Republican in 2010, but supported Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
A native of Cold Spring Harbor, a hamlet of Huntington, New York, Whitman is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School. Whitman served as an executive in The Walt Disney Company, where she was vice president of Strategic Planning throughout the 1980s. In the 1990s, she served as an executive for DreamWorks, Procter & Gamble, and Hasbro.
Whitman served as president and CEO of eBay, from 1998 to 2008. During Whitman's 10 years with the company, 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. In February 2009, Whitman announced her candidacy for Governor of California, becoming the third woman in a 20-year period to run for the office. Whitman won the Republican primary in June 2010. The fifth-wealthiest woman in California with a net worth of $1.3 billion in 2010, she spent more of her own money on the race than any other political candidate spent on a single election in American history, spending $144 million of her own fortune and $178.5 million in total, including money from donors. Whitman was defeated by Democratic former Governor Jerry Brown in the 2010 California gubernatorial election by 54% to 41%. Wikipedia
“A monkey could drive this train.”
Said about running eBay in its early days, quoted in the New York Times, " EBay Bids on a New Path to Growth http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/technology/07ebay.html", February 6, 2011
The Economist, 2nd October 2010, p. 78
