HISTORICAL FACTS

Women in the History of Computing Technology

"When people have stereotypes of what you can’t do, show them what you can do. When they have stereotypes of what you won’t do, show them what you will do. Every time you resist someone else’s smaller notion of who you really are, you test your courage and your endurance. Each time you endure, and stay true to yourself, you become stronger and better."

"The worst thing I could have imagined happened. I lost my job in the most public way possible, and the press had a field day with it all over the world. And guess what? I'm still here. I am at peace and my soul is intact."

Carly Fiorina

Carly Fiorina

Carly Fiorina is an American businesswoman, best known for serving as a chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005. She has also been an executive vice president at AT&T, where she coordinated the spinoff and initial public offering for Lucent Technologies. During her tenure at both companies, she is considered one of the most powerful women in business. In 2008, she becomes a top economic advisor to the Republican presidential candidate John McCain. What makes Fiorina a truly remarkable person, however, are not her professional successes but the fact that she works her way through undergraduate and graduate school, starts her business career as a secretary and goes on to become the first, and to date, the only woman to lead a Fortune 20 company.

Cara Carleton “Carly” Sneed Fiorina was born in Austin, Texas in 1954, the daughter of Joseph Tyree Sneed III, a law school professor, dean, and federal judge. She receives her B.A. degree in philosophy and medieval history from Stanford University in 1976. She further attends UCLA School of Law for a short period of time but drops out in order to pursue a Master of Business Administration degree in marketing at the Robert H. Smith School of Business of the University of Maryland, College Park in 1980. In 1989, when her career approaches its zenith, Fiorina also earns a Master of Science in management from the MIT Sloan School of Management under the Sloan Fellows program.

Starting at the very bottom, Carly makes her own way to the top. Her initial employments are at various secretarial and receptionist positions, including a stint at Hewlett-Packard as a temporary worker through Kelly Services. She later becomes a receptionist at the real estate firm Marcus & Millichap (including working briefly as a broker), where she gains her first professional experience with management and learns how to navigate the business world.

Fiorina’s good intuition and extensive knowledge in business administration help her rise up the corporate ladder within a short period of time. In 1980, she joins AT&T as a management trainee and soon becomes a senior vice president overseeing the company’s hardware and systems division. In 1995, she leads corporate operations for the spinoff from AT&T of Lucent Technologies and plays a major role in planning and implementing the 1996 initial public offering of stock and the firm’s launch strategy. Later in the same year she is appointed president of Lucent’s consumer products business.

Carly Fiorina

In 1997, Carly is appointed chairman of Lucent’s consumer communications joint venture with Philips consumer communications. By the end of the year, she is already a group president for the global service provider business at Lucent and oversees the marketing and sales for the company’s largest customer segment. Her professional success becomes the reason for Fortune magazine to rank her as the most powerful woman in business in 1998 (the 1998 listing is the magazine’s first ranking). In 2004, she is further included in the Time 100 and becomes #10 on the Forbes Magazine’s List of The World’s 100 Most Powerful Women for 2004.

Carly remains on the Fortune listing till the very end of her tenure at HP.

In July 1999, Hewlett-Packard Company names Fiorina chief executive officer succeeding Lewis Platt and prevailing over the internal candidate Ann Livermore. Thus Carly becomes the first woman to ever lead a Fortune 20 company. When HP breaks up, she merges the part she keeps with the PC maker Compaq and, in 2000, proposes the acquisition of computer-services business EDS. The bid, however, is withheld shortly after her proposal receives a poor reception from HP shareholders. Although the idea to acquire EDS is abandoned, HP does proceed to purchase the company in 2008. The deal ends a success.

In 2002, in the wake of the bursting of the Tech Bubble, Fiorina spearheads the controversial merger with Compaq, a leading competitor in the computing industry. She fights for the merger and implements it despite the strong opposition from board member Walter Hewlett (the son of the company’s co-founder William Hewlett) who claims she is pursuing it just for the purpose of giving herself some breathing space from Wall Street. The operation results in the creation of the world’s largest personal computer manufacturer.

In February 2005, after five years at Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina resigns her post as a CEO. Under her agreement with the company, which is often characterized as a golden parachute, she is paid over twenty million dollars in severance.

Outside judgments on Fiorina’s tenure at HP are mixed. In 2008, Infoworld groups her with a list of products and ideas as flops, declaring her to be the “anti-Steve Jobs” for reversing the goodwill of American engineers and for alienating existing customers. In 2008, Loren Steffy, on the other hand, suggests that the EDS acquisition well after Carly’s tenure is evidence that her actions as a CEO of HP were justified.

After resigning from Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina is named to several board memberships including the boards of directors at Revolution Health Group, the computer security company Cybertrust, and the chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. She also joins the boards of trustees of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum and becomes an Honorary Fellow of the London Business School.

In 2006, Fiorina releases an autobiography, Tough Choices, about her career and her views on issues such as what constitutes a leader, how women can thrive in business, and the role technology will continue to play in reshaping the world. When, in 2008, her life takes a turn, she becomes part of the Senator John McCain presidential campaign. On March 7, the same year, she is named fundraising chairman for the Republican National Committee’s “Victory” initiative.

On November 4, 2009, Fiorina formally announces her candidacy in the United States Senate election in California, 2010 in a bid to unseat incumbent Barbara Boxer. Her senate campaign has since been endorsed by John McCain himself.


The main objective of the Women in Computer Science website is to promote the breadth of the field of computer science and high technologies and outline the numerous opportunities it creates for young people and women in particular. The information presented on it serves solely to meet this objective.