Meg Whitman

Margaret C. "Meg" Whitman (born August 4, 1956) has been the President and CEO of the online marketplace eBay since March 1998. Whitman joined eBay when the company had 29 employees and operated solely in the United States; eBay is now a global organization with over 11,000 employees. In addition to managing eBay, she currently serves on the Board of Directors of Procter & Gamble and DreamWorks Animation. According to Forbes magazine, Whitman was worth an estimated $1.4 billion in 2007.^[1] She is one of only seven women to have been repeatedly ranked among the world's most influential people by Time magazine.

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Background and education

Whitman attended Cold Spring Harbor High School in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. She attended Princeton University as an undergraduate where she was a member of the student organization Business Today. She received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1979.

Career

Whitman began her working career at Procter & Gamble from 1979 to 1981, when she built her experience in brand management. She then spent eight years working for the consulting firm Bain & Company, eventually becoming a vice-president. From 1989 to 1992, Whitman was at the Walt Disney Company, where she served as the Senior Vice President of Marketing for the Disney Consumer Products Division. From 1992 to 1995 she served as President of the Stride Rite Corporation's Stride Rite Childrens Division. From 1995 to 1997, Whitman was President and CEO of Florists Transworld Delivery (FTD), but left to become the General Manager of Hasbro Inc.'s Preschool Division.

In 2005, Disney's board of directors, to publicly appear to consider candidates other than just Robert Iger to succeed Michael Eisner as CEO, interviewed Whitman for the role. When she learned she was not seriously being considered, she announced she was dropping out of the process to save face and make it appear as though she did not get the job because she took herself out of the running.

Philanthropy

Whitman, whose net worth is estimated at $1.4 billion, is said to have donated more than $30 million to her alma mater, Princeton University. The donation has allowed the construction of the university's sixth residential college, Whitman College, which opened in Fall 2007. However, she has been criticized for such action by many people. "Thirty million out of $1.3 Billion for a vanity project seems a little tight," said The Guardian newspaper of England at the time.

Political donations

As reported at Newsmeat.com, Whitman has made numerous political donations to various candidates and PACs. While these have gone to both Republican and Democratic beneficiaries, the donations seem to be weighted to Republican politicians such as Orrin Hatch, Charles Pickering, and George Allen. ^[2]

Whitman is known as a supporter of former Massachusetts' Republican governor Mitt Romney's presidential campaign^[3][4] in 2008 and is now on his "National Finance Team".^[5] She is also listed as Finance co-chair of Romney's campaign exploratory committee. ^[6]

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