1. Margaret Cushing Whitman was born on August 4,1956 and is an American business executive, diplomat, and politician who had served as the United States ambassador to Kenya from 2022 until her resignation on November 13,2024.
73 Facts About Meg Whitman
1. 2.
Meg Whitman was president and chief executive officer of eBay from 1998 to 2008.
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Meg Whitman then served as the CEO of Quibi from its launch in 2018 until its closure in 2020.
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Meg 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.
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Meg Whitman was an executive at The Walt Disney Company, where she was vice president of Strategic Planning throughout the 1980s.
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In 2014, Meg Whitman was named 20th in Forbes List of the 100 Most Powerful Women in the World.
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In 2008, Meg Whitman was cited by The New York Times as among the women most likely to become the first female president of the United States.
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Meg Whitman ran for governor of California in 2010, winning the Republican primary.
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In December 2021, Meg Whitman was nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as the United States Ambassador to Kenya.
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Meg Whitman was confirmed in July 2022 and took office the following month.
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Meg Whitman was born in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, the daughter of Margaret Cushing and Hendricks Hallett Meg Whitman Jr.
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Meg Whitman's patrilineal great-great-great-grandfather, Elnathan Whitman, was a member of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly.
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Meg Whitman's 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.
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Meg Whitman attended Cold Spring Harbor High School in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, graduating after three years in 1974.
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Meg Whitman wanted to be a doctor, so she studied math and science at Princeton University.
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Meg Whitman is married to Griffith Harsh IV, Chair of Neurosurgery at the University of California, Davis, previously at Stanford University Medical Center.
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Meg Whitman rose through the ranks to achieve the position of senior vice president.
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Meg Whitman became vice president of strategic planning at the Walt Disney Company in 1989.
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Meg Whitman imported the UK's children's television show Teletubbies into the US.
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Originally, when Meg Whitman joined eBay, she found the website as a simple black and white webpage using the Courier typeface.
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Meg Whitman believed the site to be confusing and began by building a new executive team.
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Meg Whitman organized the company by splitting it into 23 business categories.
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Meg Whitman then assigned executives to each, including some 35,000 subcategories.
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In 2004, Meg Whitman made several key changes in her management team.
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Meg 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.
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Meg Whitman was inducted into the US Business Hall of Fame in 2008.
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Meg Whitman has received numerous awards and accolades for her work at eBay.
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In January 2011, Meg Whitman joined Hewlett-Packard's board of directors.
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In 2012, Meg 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.
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HP's stock led the list by underperforming by 30.7 percentage points since Meg Whitman took the job.
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On July 26,2017, Meg Whitman stepped down as chair of HP Inc.
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On November 21,2017, it was announced Meg Whitman was stepping down as the CEO of HPE, effective February 1,2018, with HPE president Antonio Neri taking over as CEO.
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Meg Whitman was CEO of Quibi, a short-form media content app designed for smartphones.
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Meg Whitman was appointed to the board of Goldman Sachs in October 2001 and then resigned in December 2002, amidst controversy that she had received shares in several public offerings managed by Goldman Sachs, although she denied any wrongdoing.
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Meg Whitman has been a member of the board at SurveyMonkey.
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In 2018, Meg Whitman invested in and joined the board of the eSports organization Immortals Gaming Club.
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In November 2019, Meg Whitman purchased a minority stake in FC Cincinnati.
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Meg Whitman will serve as the club's Alternate Governor on the MLS Board of Governors.
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On December 8,2021, President Joe Biden nominated Meg Whitman to serve as United States ambassador to Kenya.
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Meg Whitman presented her credentials to President Uhuru Kenyatta on August 5,2022.
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In November 2024, following the election of Donald Trump, Meg Whitman presented her resignation as US Ambassador to Kenya.
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In 2010, Warren Buffett asked Meg Whitman to join the Giving Pledge in which billionaires would commit to donating half of their money to charity, and Meg Whitman declined.
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Meg Whitman was a supporter of the Mitt Romney 2008 presidential campaign and was a member of his national finance team.
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Meg Whitman was listed as finance co-chair of Romney's exploratory committee.
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Meg Whitman's name was mentioned as a possible cabinet member in a Romney administration before he lost to Obama.
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Meg Whitman called on all Republicans "to put country first before party" and added that she would support the campaign financially.
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Meg Whitman spoke at the 2020 Democratic National Convention in support of the party's presidential nominee Joe Biden.
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On February 10,2009, Meg Whitman announced she would run for governor of California in the 2010 election.
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On June 8,2010, Meg Whitman won the Republican primary, becoming the first female to run on the Republican ticket and the third female overall to run for Governor of California after Dianne Feinstein in 1990 and Kathleen Brown in 1994.
50.
In June 2010, Meg Whitman released a political ad, "A Lifetime in Politics A Legacy of Failure", which seemingly contained one image of the FAIL Blog website, making it appear in the ad as if Jerry Brown had been the subject of one of the website's namesake "fails".
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In 2010, The Sacramento Bee reported that Meg Whitman did not vote for 28 years, after reviewing her voting records in California.
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Meg Whitman has described her voting record as "inexcusable", apologized for it, and stated that she is happy to discuss the matter.
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Meg Whitman's campaign released documents which she said Santillan provided prior to her employment including a driver's license, social security ID, and application.
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Santillan said Meg Whitman knew she was undocumented, producing a 2003 letter from the Social Security Administration stating that her Social Security number did not match her name.
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Meg Whitman's campaign maintained that this was a political attack, stating that Allred is a Jerry Brown supporter.
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The Fort Worth Star-Telegram noted that Meg Whitman "hired her, paid her and had direct contact with her for nine years", so should have known her legal status.
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The Los Angeles Times noted that Latino voters were more likely interested that Meg Whitman treated Santillan "like a piece of garbage" when the maid asked for help finding an immigration attorney, and Meg Whitman allegedly stated "you don't know me and I don't know you".
58.
Goldman Sachs, whose executives donated $100,000 to the Meg Whitman campaign, manages a part of Meg Whitman's fortune.
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Meg Whitman later resigned from the Goldman Sachs board after some expressed concern over her receiving shares from Goldman Sachs.
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Public domain documents reveal that Meg Whitman has a multimillion-dollar stake in 21 investment funds managed by Goldman Sachs.
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In November 2024 Meg Whitman announced her resignation as ambassador following Trump's win.
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Meg Whitman argued that it is best to start only a few things and finish them, instead of starting a lot of things and finishing few of them.
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Meg Whitman said that if elected, on her first day she would have suspended AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, for a year to study its potential economic implications.
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At the state Republican Convention in March 2010, Meg Whitman described California Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's climate change bill as a "job-killer".
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Meg Whitman opposed Proposition 23, which would delay the global warming law AB 32 until California's unemployment falls to 5.5 percent and stays there for a year, stating that the proposition did not reasonably balance the need to protect jobs with the need to preserve environment.
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Meg Whitman said that Arizona's approach to illegal immigration with Arizona SB 1070 is wrong and that there are better ways to solve the problem.
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Meg Whitman said that, if she had lived in California in 1994, she would have voted against Proposition 187 concerning illegal immigrants.
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Meg Whitman stated that illegal immigrant students should be prohibited from attending state-funded institutions of higher education.
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In 2009, Meg Whitman called for "a path to legalization" of illegal immigrants.
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Meg Whitman criticized Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown for not defending Proposition 8 in the federal judicial system.
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However, on February 26,2013, Meg Whitman confirmed that she had reversed that opinion.
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Meg Whitman has made monetary donations to various candidates and political action committees.
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In 2017, Meg Whitman was the Commencement speaker for Carnegie Mellon University and was awarded an honorary doctorate degree.