Meg Whitman

Meg Whitman: Career Highlights

Whitman began her career in 1979 as a brand manager at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, Ohio. She then moved on to work as a consultant at Bain & Company, where she rose through the ranks to achieve the position of senior vice president. In 1989, Whitman became vice president of strategic planning at the Walt Disney Company. She later joined the Stride Rite Corporation before becoming president and CEO of Florists' Transworld Delivery in 1995. In January 1997, Whitman became the general manager of Hasbro's Playskool Division, where she oversaw global management and marketing of two children's brands, Playskool and Mr. Potato Head. She also played a role in importing the UK's children's television show Teletubbies into the U.S.

In March 1998, Whitman joined eBay, which at the time had 30 employees and annual revenues of approximately $4 million. During her tenure as CEO, through 2008, the company grew to approximately 15,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue.

Whitman organized the company by splitting it into 23 business categories and assigning executives to each. Under her leadership, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay valued at $1.5 billion in 2002. In 2005, eBay completed the purchase of Skype for $4.1B in cash and stock. However, eBay later admitted that it had overpaid and sold Skype to a group of investors led by Silver Lake Partners at a valuation of $2.75B in 2009.

In January 2011, Whitman joined Hewlett-Packard's (HP) board of directors and was named CEO on September 22, 2011. During her time at HP, she renewed focus on the company's Research & Development division and announced a write-down of $8.8 billion of the value of Autonomy, a British software company that HP had purchased the previous year. Whitman stepped down as chair of HP Inc.'s board of directors in July 2017 while remaining as CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). She eventually stepped down as CEO of HPE in November 2017, with HPE president Antonio Neri taking over as CEO.

In addition to her corporate career, Whitman also served as CEO of Quibi, a short-form media content app designed for smartphones. However, Quibi faced challenges and was considering sale or acquisition with a valuation of $500 million in September 2020, despite its $1.75 billion initial investment, as it failed to meet subscriber targets.