Writer and Former CEO
Carly Fiorina
Notes from Evan Smith
" For a while, she was one of the most powerful and high-profile women in Corporate America, which, let’s be honest, has not been entirely hospitable to powerful and high-profile women. From 1999 to 2005, following stints as a top executive with AT&T, Lucent, and Phillips, Carly Fiorina was the CEO of technology giant Hewlett-Packard; from 2000 to 2005, she was also chairman of the board. During that time, she proposed and executed a controversial merger with Compaq, HP’s Houston-based rival — and for a while, HP’s personal computer business was number one in the world — greater than Dell’s, greater than anyone else’s. But by 2005, the company’s fortunes had fallen as quickly as they had risen, and she was unceremoniously and publicly ousted — becoming as famous in the rear view mirror as she was in the driver’s seat. And yet no tears should have been shed for the Austin native, a graduate of Stanford University, the University of Maryland, and MIT, as she shed none for herself. As she famously told a class of graduates in mid-’05, “I lost my job in the most public way possible, and the press had a field day with it all over the world. And guess what? I'm still here. I am at peace and my soul is intact.” That’s the message of her 2006 memoir, Tough Choices, in which she detailed what is was like for a woman to ascend to the heights of power on her own terms. And that’s her message today, as she travels the country as a sought-after speaker, appears regularly as a commentator on the Fox Business Channel, or sits down for a chat about amazing life — as she did last fall." - Evan Smith, Texas Monthly Talks, Broadcast 1.17.08
