Carly Fiorina


As chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Hewlett-Packard (HP), a technology company worth $72 billion, Carly Fiorina is the most powerful woman in American business. Many give credit to the savvy businesswoman for leading the technology titan into the twenty-first century. In 2002 Fiorina cemented her reputation as a risk taker when she engineered a controversial merger between HP and Compaq Computers.

After expanding her empire, Fiorina was sitting at the helm of the second largest computer company in the world. By the mid-2000s, however, given HP's shaky numbers, critics wondered if Fiorina's reign would continue. Regardless, her role in history as a trailblazer would remain. When she joined Hewlett-Packard in 1999, Fiorina became the only woman to head a large, publicly held company in the United States.

Businesswoman Carly Fiorina was born Cara Carleton Sneed on September 6, 1954, in Austin, Texas. Her unique name was the result of family tradition. All the male members of the Sneed family who were named Carleton died while serving in the Civil War (1861–1865). To honor them, one child in each subsequent generation was named either Carleton (if a boy) or Cara Carleton (if a girl).

Fiorina's father, Joseph Sneed, was a lawyer and at one time served as deputy attorney general under President Richard M. Nixon (1913–1994). He also served for more than thirty years as an appeals court judge in San Francisco, California. Fiorina's mother, Madelon, was an abstract painter. In 2003, during a ceremony honoring her father's longstanding career,

Fiorina credited her parents for inspiring her to excel. "In times of hardship and uncertainty," she observed, as quoted on the OCE Public Information Office Web site, "people need a strong internal compass to find their way." Fiorina specifically thanked her father for "always being my true north."
"Progress is not made by the cynics and doubters. It is made by those who believe everything is possible."