Margaret C. Whitman (born August 4, 1956 in Long Island) is an American businesswoman who was the CEO of online auction site eBay from 1998 to 2008. She has supported and campaigned for Governor Mitt Romney and after its withdrawal, for John McCain during the U.S. presidential election of 2008. In February 2009, she announced her candidacy for governor of California to the Republican Party.

Meg Whitman was born into a wealthy family on Long Island in New York. Third and last child of the family, his father is a financial investor and his mother a homemaker. After a brilliant school, she studied at Princeton University.

In 1978, she graduated with an MBA at Harvard. On campus, she met Griffith Harsh, future neurosurgeon who became her husband and son gave him two. Meg Whitman Career

In 1979, she joined Procter & Gamble and in 1981, she joined the consulting firm Bain in San Francisco. She became vice president before joining the group in 1989 when Walt Disney, vice president of marketing, it is dedicated to developing products.

In 1992, following the appointment of her husband at the Massachusetts Hospital in Boston, Meg Whitman took over the Stride Rite Group in Boston. In 1995 she became head of the group Florists Transworld Delivery (FTD), the largest producer in the world of floral products. She took the opportunity to launch an online sales site intended for U.S. florists.

In 1997 she became head of the division of preschool toy manufacturer Hasbro. It is called in 1998 by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, to lead his company in California. The eBay does not count as 30 employees and was established in the territory of the United States. Since, under the direction of Meg Whitman, eBay has become a multinational, employing over 11,000 people worldwide.

On the sidelines of the Presidency of eBay, she participated in the Steering Committee for Procter & Gamble and DreamWorks Animation.
In 2004 she was crowned “the first business woman in the world” by U.S. magazine Fortune. She then precedes Carly Fiorina, boss of Hewlett-Packard from 2000 to 2005, Andrea Jung, president of the firm Avon. This title then reward the work of Meg Whitman to be able to make eBay “the most important e-commerce site of the world’s most valued brands and Internet company with the fastest growth in history.”According to Forbes magazine, Whitman was at the head of an estate estimated at least $ 1.3 billion in 2007.

During the presidential campaign of 2008, she supports Mitt Romney before, after the withdrawal of the latter, joining the national leadership of the campaign team of John McCain. His name was then mentioned alongside those of Mitt Romney, former Governor Tom Ridge and Governor Tim Pawlenty as a possible running mates for John McCain.

On February 9, 2009, she announced her candidacy for the governorship of California whose election is held in November 2010, to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger who can not stand after two terms. It was defeated by Democrat Jerry Brown who gets 49% of the votes against 46% for the Republican candidate.

She spent more than $ 140 million of his own pocket, and a total of 180 million, or $ 57 for each of the 3 million votes she received.