Background and career
Margaret Cushing Whitman (born August 4, 1956) is an American business executive, diplomat and politician. She served as the United States ambassador to Kenya from July 2022 to November 2024 under President Joe Biden. Until 2025, when she stated she was a registered Democrat, Whitman was a member of the Republican Party. She ran for governor of California in the 2010 California gubernatorial election and lost to former California Governor Jerry Brown, 54% to 41%. 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 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. 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 2014, Whitman was named 20th in Forbes List of the 100 Most Powerful Women in the World. Whitman has held various business executive positions at the Walt Disney Company, eBay, Hewlett Packard and Quibi.
Whitman was born on August 4, 1956 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 and great-great-grandfather, Charles B. Farwell, of Illinois, was a U.S. Senator. 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 and graduated in 1974 after only three years. 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. Whitman 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. Whitman College, a residential college completed in 2007 at Princeton University, was named for Meg Whitman following her $30 million donation.
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 from 1989 to 1992. 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.
Whitman joined eBay in March 1998 when it had 30 employees and annual revenues of approximately $4 million. During her time as CEO, through 2008, the company grew to approximately 15,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue. In 2002, soon after its initial public offering, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay valued at $1.5 billion. During Whitman's tenure as CEO, eBay completed the purchase of Skype for $4.1B in cash and stock in September 2005. 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 2007, but remained on the board and served as an advisor to new CEO John Donahoe until late 2008. She was inducted into the U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 2008. Whitman received accolades for her work at eBay. She was named among the top five most powerful women by Fortune magazine. Harvard Business Review named her the eighth-best-performing CEO of the past decade. The Financial Times named her as one of the 50 faces that shaped the decade.
In January 2011, Whitman joined Hewlett-Packard's (HP) board of directors. She was named CEO on September 22, 2011. As well as renewing focus on HP's Research & Development division, Whitman's major decision during her first year as CEO was to retain and recommit the firm to the PC business that her predecessor announced he was considering discarding. In 2012, Whitman announced that HP would write down $8.8 billion of the value of Autonomy, the British software company it had purchased the previous year. The announcement eventually led to a civil case in the UK in 2019 at which Whitman testified to having not carried out "proper calculations of the write-down." In May 2013, Bloomberg L.P. named Whitman "Most Underachieving CEO" – along with Apple's CEO Tim Cook (ranked 12th) and IBM's Virginia Rometty (ranked 10th) – whose stocks had all turned in the worst numbers relative to the broader market since the beginning of each CEO's tenure. HP's stock led the list by underperforming by 30.7 percentage points since Whitman took the job. On July 26, 2017, Whitman stepped down as chair of HP Inc.'s board of directors, while remaining as CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). Whitman fought off further rumours around her position at HPE, where she was quoted by The New York Times "So let me make this as clear as I can. I am fully committed to HPE and plan to remain the company's C.E.O. We have a lot of work still to do at HPE and I am not going anywhere" On November 21, 2017, it was announced Whitman was stepping down as the CEO of HPE, effective February 1, 2018, with HPE president Antonio Neri taking over as CEO.
Whitman was CEO of Quibi, a short-form media content app designed for smartphones. In September 2020, just 5 months after its launch, Quibi was considering sale or acquisition with a valuation of $500 million, despite its $1.75 billion initial investment, having failed to meet subscriber targets. Coverage and analysis has blamed this failure on the concept itself, and failures of leadership from Whitman due to her lack of "experience in the industry of the company she is running." The failure of the app was predicted by many in the Silicon Valley tech ecosystem, with one critic, Rob Enderle listing this as the most recent in Whitman's "repetitive failures" due to her "inability to take responsibility for mistakes, an inability to support subordinates, a focus on shifting blame, and a lack of subject matter expertise."
