Meg Whitman, CEO of tech giant Hewlett-Packard, is one of the most respected corporate executives in the world. A graduate of Princeton and Harvard Business School, Whitman began her career at Proctor & Gamble in 1979, before moving on to increasingly high-level positions at Bain & Company, Walt Disney & Company, Stride Rite and Hasbro. In 1998, Whitman joined a small online auction business called eBay. At the time, the company had just 30 employees and $4 million in sales.
(MORE: Who’s to Blame for Hewlett-Packard’s Multi-Billion Dollar Autonomy Debacle?)
Over the next decade, Whitman grew eBay into one of the most successful Internet companies in the world, with 15,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue. After leaving eBay in 2007, Whitman ran for governor of California, but despite spending over $140 million of her own money on the race, she was defeated by veteran California politico Jerry Brown. In September of 2011, Whitman was named CEO of Hewlett-Packard, one of the most storied firms in Silicon Valley. At H.P., she faces a challenging situation, as the company stuggles to manage the shift from hardware to software and services.