Friday Mieography

My blog is really not interested in politics, (at least it says its not), and I seldom put any of my political preferences on here... that being said. We have an election coming up in California. The Terminators term of Governator-ship is about to expire.

A name has been popping up a lot lately, Meg Whitman.

I've heard the name before, but I don't (or didn't) know anything about her. Since I do intend to vote in this election, I decided to figure out who she is...

Margaret Cushing Whitman was born in Long Island, New York. She had traditional schooling, and after high school decided she wanted to become a doctor. She went to Princeton University to study physics and mathematics. During her studies, she spent a summer selling magazine advertisements, and when she finished with that she changed her major to economics, and earned a BA with honors. She then continued on to earn her MBA from Harvard Business School.

She got her first job as a brand manager at Procter and Gamble in Ohio, then moved on to San Francisco, working at a company called Bain & Company. She worked her way up to senior Vice President. She then became the Vice President of strategic planning for the Walt Disney Corporation, and eventually, she became the President and CEO of FTD. She then spet some time at Hasbro, overseeing their global management, and marketing of Playskool, and Mr. Potato Head.

Then, a small company with only 30 employees hired her. It was called EBAY. She became their CEO. In ten years, it had grown to 15,000 employees, and was a multi billion dollar corporation. She has been, repeatedly, named one of Fortune Magazines top five powerful women. She has also been inducted into the U.S. Business Hall of Fame.

She doesn't come without controversy, though. She had also been briefly employed at Goldman Sachs, and there is an allegation that she received public shares during that time. She made 1.78 million dollars "spinning", where executives who did business with Goldman Sachs could get profits by getting early deals (before the public) on IPO's offered by the bank...

She was a Mitt Romney backer, initially, during the last election, as she had worked with him at Bain & Company, where he'd been the CEO. She endorsed McCain after Mitt stepped down. He was considering making her Secretary of Treasury had he been elected.

Though she is a Republican (obviously), she has donated money to many candidates, both Republican, and Democrat, including Barbara Boxer.

She announced in 2009 that she intended to run for the Governor of California. She claims she won't be raising our taxes, and has signed the Americans for Tax Reforms "No New Taxes Pledge". She says she is going to make California more 'business friendly', because the state is losing jobs to to other countries and neighboring states that have lower tax rates. Her campaign is almost entirely self funded, with only 20% of her funds from contributions from others. Jerry Brown is considered to be her most competitive opponent....