Carly Fiorina

Cara Carleton "Carly" Fiorina (née Sneed; born September 6, 1954) is an American former technology business executive and former Presidential candidate in the 2016 Republican primaries. She currently chairs the non-profit philanthropic organization Good360.

Fiorina began her business career at AT&T in 1980 as a management trainee and rose through the ranks to become the company's first female executive officer. In 1995, Fiorina led corporate operations for AT&T's equipment and technology spin-off, Lucent Technologies. As chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard (HP) from 1999 to 2005, she was the first woman to lead a top-20 company as ranked by Fortune magazine.

In 2002, Fiorina oversaw what was then the largest technology sector merger in history, in which HP acquired rival personal computer manufacturer Compaq. The transaction made HP the world's largest seller of personal computers. HP subsequently laid off 30,000 U.S. employees in order to save an existing 80,000 jobs by making the company more competitive. By 2004, HP's total number of both U.S. and non-U.S. employees, including roughly 8,000 employees of companies acquired by HP after 2001, was around the same number as the pre-merger number of employees at HP and Compaq combined. On February 9, 2005, the HP board of directors forced Fiorina to resign as chief executive officer and chair.