PERSON: Carly Fiorina

Self-employed

Businesswoman

When Carly Fiorina told her father, law professor Joseph Tyree Sneed III, that she’d decided to drop out of law school after her first year at UCLA, he shook his head and said he didn’t think she’d amount to much. Two decades later, she’s been named the most powerful woman in American business by Fortune magazine and in 1999 was named president/CEO of one of the world’s most important technology companies, Hewlett-Packard.<br> <br> Carly, her artist mother, Madelon Montross, and her two siblings moved frequently thanks to her father’s wide-ranging career. She attended five different high schools, including one in Ghana. In college, she studied medieval history and philosophy, and after trying law school, she bounced from job to job, working as a receptionist, teaching English in Italy, and finally signing on as a sales rep at AT&T at age 25. In the coming years, she would earn an MBA from the University of Maryland and a MS degree from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.<br> <br> Interested in the developing field of network communications, she surprised her co-workers by joining the male-dominated Network Systems division. At age 35, Carly became the division’s first female officer, and five years later was named head of North American sales. She combined an appreciation of new technologies with powerful sales instincts, which won the attention of top brass at AT&T. In 1996, the company decided to spin off its Western Electric and Bell Labs divisions into a new company. Carly was tagged to spearhead the effort. Under her guidance, the spin-off, dubbed Lucent, became one of the most successful IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) in U.S. history, raising $3 billion.<br> <br> Carly’s first marriage ended in divorce. In 1985, she married AT&T executive Frank Fiorina who put his own career on the slow track in order to support hers. He predicted early on that she would run a big company someday, and he pledged to help her. Retired in 1998, he devotes his time to yachting, caring for their dogs, and accompanying Fiorina on business trips.<br> <br> — biography.com