Margaret Cushing Whitman, commonly known as Meg Whitman, is an American business executive, entrepreneur, politician, and diplomat born on August 4, 1956, in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in economics from Princeton University in 1977 and an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1979. Early in her career, she worked in brand management at Procter & Gamble and as a consultant at Bain & Company, before moving into strategic roles at companies like Hasbro and The Walt Disney Company. Her most prominent business achievements came as CEO of eBay from 1998 to 2008, during which she transformed the online auction platform into a global e-commerce giant, growing its revenue from $86 million to over $8 billion. She then served as CEO of Hewlett-Packard (HP) from 2011 to 2018, navigating the company through a major split into HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. She later became president and CEO of Quibi, a short-form video streaming service that launched in 2020 but shut down after six months. Whitman has also been involved in venture capital, co-founding Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 2017, and serves on boards such as General Motors and Procter & Gamble. In politics, she ran unsuccessfully as the Republican nominee for Governor of California in 2010, spending over $140 million of her own money on the campaign. She later shifted political affiliations, endorsing Democrats such as Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. From July 2022 to November 2024, Whitman served as the United States Ambassador to Kenya under President Joe Biden, focusing on economic partnerships, climate initiatives, and counter-terrorism efforts. Her career reflects a blend of corporate innovation and public service.