Arianna Huffington

Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington (née Ariadnē-Anna Stasinopoúlou; Greek: Αριάδνη-Άννα Στασινοπούλου, pronounced [ariˈaðni ˈana stasinoˈpulu]; born July 15, 1950) is a Greek and American author, syndicated columnist and businesswoman.

She is a co-founder of HuffPost, the founder and CEO of Thrive Global, and the author of fifteen books. She has been named in Time magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people and the Forbes Most Powerful Women list. Huffington serves on numerous boards, including Onex and Global Citizen.

Two of her books have been dogged by allegations of plagiarism, for one of which she paid another author an out-of-court settlement. Her last two books, Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder and The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time, both became international bestsellers.

Huffington, the former wife of Republican congressman Michael Huffington, co-founded The Huffington Post, which was later acquired by BuzzFeed. She was a popular conservative commentator in the mid-1990s, after which, in the late 1990s, she offered liberal points of view in public, while remaining involved in business endeavors. In 2003, she ran as an independent candidate for governor in the California recall election and lost. In 2009, Huffington was No. 12 in Forbes first-ever list of the Most Influential Women In Media. She has also moved up to No. 42 in The Guardian's Top 100 in Media List. As of 2014, she was listed by Forbes as the 52nd Most Powerful Woman in the World. She had moved to 77th as of 2018 and dropped off the list as of 2019.

Huffington was born Ariadnē-Anna Stasinopoúlou (Αριάδνη-Άννα Στασινοπούλου) in Athens, Greece, in 1950, the daughter of Konstantinos (a journalist and management consultant) and Elli (née Georgiadi) Stasinopoulou, and is the sister of Agapi (an author, speaker, and performer). She moved to the United Kingdom at the age of 16 and studied economics at Girton College, Cambridge, where she was the first foreign, and third female, president of the Cambridge Union. She studied abroad in India, and told IANS in an email interview "India has long held a special place in my heart, from the time I went to study comparative religion at Visva-Bharati University."

In 1971, Huffington appeared in an edition of Face the Music along with Bernard Levin. A relationship developed, of which she wrote, after his death: "He wasn't just the big love of my life, he was a mentor as a writer and a role model as a thinker." Huffington began writing books in the 1970s, with editorial help from Levin. The two traveled to music festivals around the world for the BBC. They spent summers patronizing three-star restaurants in France. At the age of 30, she remained deeply in love with him but longed to have children; Levin never wanted to marry or have children.

From March to April 1980, Huffington joined Bob Langley as the co-host of BBC1's late-night talk and entertainment show Saturday Night at the Mill, appearing in just five editions before being dropped from the programme.

In 1973, Arianna (as Stasinopoúlou) wrote a book titled The Female Woman, attacking the Women's Liberation movement in general and Germaine Greer's 1970 The Female Eunuch in particular. In the book she wrote, "Women's Lib claims that the achievement of total liberation would transform the lives of all women for the better; the truth is that it would transform only the lives of women with strong lesbian tendencies."

In the late 1980s, Huffington wrote several articles for National Review. In 1981, she wrote a biography of Maria Callas, Maria Callas – The Woman Behind the Legend, and in 1989, a biography of Pablo Picasso, Picasso: Creator and Destroyer.

Huffington rose to the national U.S. prominence during the unsuccessful Senate bid in 1994 by her then husband, Michael Huffington, a Republican. She became known as a reliable supporter of conservative causes such as Newt Gingrich's "Republican Revolution" and Bob Dole's 1996 candidacy for president. She teamed up with liberal comedian Al Franken as the conservative half of "Strange Bedfellows" during Comedy Central's coverage of the 1996 U.S. presidential election. For her work, she and the writing team of Politically Incorrect were nominated for a 1997 Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Variety or Music Program.

As late as 1998, Huffington still aligned herself with the Republican Party. During that year, she did a weekly radio show in Los Angeles called Left, Right & Center, that "match[ed] her, the so-called 'right-winger', against self-described centrist policy wonk Matt Miller, and veteran 'leftist' journalist Robert Scheer." In an April 1998 profile in The New Yorker, Margaret Talbot wrote, "Most recently, she has cast herself as a kind of Republican Spice Girl – an endearingly ditzy right wing gal-about-town who is a guilty pleasure for people who know better." Huffington described herself by side-stepping the traditional party divide, saying "the right–left divisions are so outdated now. For me, the primary division is between people who are aware of what I call 'the two nations' (rich and poor), and those who are not."

Huffington, of Greek background, opposed the NATO intervention in Serbia during the Yugoslav Wars and in 2000, she co-convened the "Shadow Conventions", which appeared at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia and the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles at Patriotic Hall.

Huffington was accused of plagiarism for copying material for her book Maria Callas (1981); the claims were settled out of court in 1981, with Callas' biographer Gerald Fitzgerald being paid "in the low five figures."

Huffington has had a lifelong interest in spirituality; in her youth, together with Bernard Levin, she explored the Rajneesh movement, later dating Erhard Seminars Training founder Werner Erhard and going on to become affiliated with John-Roger Hinkins' Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. In 1994, she published a self-help book titled The Fourth Instinct, outlining her view that people should rise above the three basic instincts of survival, power, and sex to find their higher and better selves.

Huffington was named to the 2011 Time 100 as a media mogul. Huffington was selected for the inaugural 2021 Forbes 50 Over 50; made up of entrepreneurs, leaders, scientists and creators who are over the age of 50.

Huffington is Greek by birth and became a naturalized American citizen in 1990. She met her husband Michael Huffington in 1985. They were married a year later, on April 12, 1986, and have two daughters.

The couple later moved to Santa Barbara, California, and, in 1992, Michael ran as a Republican for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, winning the election by a significant margin. In 1994, he narrowly lost the race for the U.S. Senate seat in California to incumbent Dianne Feinstein.