Meg Whitman

Margaret Cushing Whitman (born August 4, 1956) is an American business executive, diplomat and politician. She served as the United States ambassador to Kenya from July 2022 to November 2024 under President Joe Biden.

Until 2025, when she stated she was a registered Democrat, Whitman was a member of the Republican Party. She ran for governor of California in the 2010 California gubernatorial election and lost to former California Governor Jerry Brown, 54% to 41%. The fifth-wealthiest woman in California with a net worth of $1.3 billion in 2010, she spent, at the time, more of her own money on a single election than any other political candidate in American history. The $144 million of her own fortune she used for the race (the campaign spent $178.5 million in total, including money from donors) was surpassed only by Michael Bloomberg in the 2020 presidential election. Whitman was a senior presidential campaign official for Republican Mitt Romney in both 2008 and 2012, although she supported Democrats Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in the 2016 presidential election and the 2020 presidential election, respectively.

In 2008, Whitman was cited by The New York Times as among the women most likely to become the first female president of the United States. In 2014, Whitman was named 20th in Forbes List of the 100 Most Powerful Women in the World. Whitman has held various business executive positions at the Walt Disney Company, eBay, Hewlett Packard and Quibi.

Whitman was born on August 4, 1956 in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, the daughter of Margaret Cushing (née Goodhue) and Hendricks Hallett Whitman Jr. Her patrilineal great-great-great-grandfather, Elnathan Whitman, was a member of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly and great-great-grandfather, Charles B. Farwell, of Illinois, was a U.S. Senator. On her mother's side, she is a great-granddaughter of historian and jurist Munroe Smith and a great-great-granddaughter of General Henry S. Huidekoper. Her paternal grandmother, born Adelaide Chatfield-Taylor, was the daughter of writer Hobart Chatfield-Taylor and his wife, Rose Farwell Chatfield-Taylor, and the sister of economist Wayne Chatfield-Taylor.

Whitman attended Cold Spring Harbor High School in Cold Spring Harbor, New York and graduated in 1974 after only three years. She wanted to be a doctor, so she studied math and science at Princeton University. However, after spending a summer selling advertisements for the magazine Business Today, she changed over to the study of economics. She graduated with an A.B. in economics with honors from Princeton University in 1977. Whitman obtained an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1979.

Whitman is married to Griffith Harsh IV, Chair of Neurosurgery at the University of California, Davis, previously at Stanford University Medical Center. They have two sons, Griffith Harsh V and William Harsh. Whitman College, a residential college completed in 2007 at Princeton University, was named for Meg Whitman following her $30 million donation.

Whitman began her career in 1979 as a brand manager at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, Ohio. Whitman later moved on to work as a consultant at Bain & Company from 1989 to 1992. She rose through the ranks to achieve the position of senior vice president.

Whitman became vice president of strategic planning at the Walt Disney Company in 1989. Two years later, she joined the Stride Rite Corporation before becoming president and CEO of Florists' Transworld Delivery in 1995.

As Hasbro's Playskool Division general manager, starting in January 1997, she oversaw global management and marketing of two children's brands, Playskool and Mr. Potato Head. She also imported the UK's children's television show Teletubbies into the U.S.

Whitman joined eBay in March 1998 when it had 30 employees and annual revenues of approximately $4 million. During her time as CEO, through 2008, the company grew to approximately 15,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue. In 2002, soon after its initial public offering, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay valued at $1.5 billion.

During Whitman's tenure as CEO, eBay completed the purchase of Skype for $4.1B in cash and stock in September 2005.

Whitman was a supporter of the Mitt Romney 2008 presidential campaign and was a member of his national finance team. She was also listed as finance co-chair of Romney's exploratory committee. After Romney stepped out of the race and endorsed John McCain, Whitman joined McCain's presidential campaign as a national co-chair. McCain mentioned Whitman as a possible secretary of the treasury during the second presidential debate in 2008, but lost the election to Barack Obama.

During the 2012 Republican primaries, Whitman endorsed Mitt Romney, who praised her. Whitman's name was mentioned as a possible cabinet member in a Romney administration before he lost to Obama.

During the 2016 Republican primaries, Whitman was finance co-chair of the Chris Christie 2016 presidential campaign. After Christie withdrew from the race and subsequently endorsed Donald Trump, Whitman criticized it as "an astonishing display of political opportunism" and called on other Christie donors to reject Trump, whom she compared to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. In August, Whitman endorsed the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign, stating that to vote for Trump "out of party loyalty alone would be to endorse a candidacy that I believe has exploited anger, grievance, xenophobia and racial division". Acknowledging policy differences with Clinton, Whitman nonetheless praised her "temperament, global experience and commitment to America's bedrock national values". She called on all Republicans "to put country first before party" and added that she would support the campaign financially.

Whitman spoke at the 2020 Democratic National Convention in support of the party's presidential nominee Joe Biden.

On February 10, 2009, Whitman announced she would run for governor of California in the 2010 election. On June 8, 2010, Whitman won the Republican primary, becoming the first female to run on the Republican ticket and the third female overall to run for Governor of California after Dianne Feinstein in 1990 and Kathleen Brown in 1994. Her campaign was largely self-funded. She ultimately lost to Jerry Brown.

While running for governor, Whitman emphasized three major areas: job creation, reduced state government spending, and reform of the state's K-12 educational system. She argued that it is best to start only a few things and finish them, instead of starting a lot of things and finishing few of them.

Whitman said that if elected, on her first day she would have suspended AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, for a year to study its potential economic implications. AB 32 requires the state to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2020. At the state Republican Convention in March 2010, Whitman described California Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's climate change bill as a "job-killer". Whitman opposed Proposition 23, which would delay the global warming law AB 32 until California's unemployment falls to 5.5 percent and stays there for a year, stating that the proposition did not reasonably balance the need to protect jobs with the need to preserve environment.

On water issues, Whitman opposed further restrictions on water supply in the Central Valley, and she suggested that President Obama should overturn a federal judge's ruling under provisions in the Endangered Species Act which reduced water supplies another 5% to 7%.

During the 2010 California gubernatorial election, Whitman supported California's Proposition 8, which reversed In re Marriage Cases and defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman in the state. Whitman also criticized Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown for not defending Proposition 8 in the federal judicial system. However, on February 26, 2013, Whitman confirmed that she had reversed that opinion. Whitman stated, "At the time, I believed the people of California had weighed in on this question and that overturning the will of the people was the wrong approach," and "The facts and arguments presented during the legal process since then have had a profound impact on my thinking." Whitman also believes that gay and lesbian couples should be permitted to adopt children.

While campaigning during the 2010 California gubernatorial election, Whitman has suggested "Every law enforcement person will tell you that we shouldn't be legalizing marijuana for any reason, least of all for monetary gain." and that "This is the worst idea I've ever seen."

Whitman founded a charitable foundation with her husband, Griffith Harsh, on December 21, 2006, by donating 300,000 shares of eBay stock worth $9.4 million. By the end of its first year of operation, the Griffith R. Harsh IV and Margaret C Whitman Charitable Foundation had $46 million in assets and has disbursed $125,000 to charitable causes.

In 2010, Warren Buffett asked Whitman to join the Giving Pledge in which billionaires would commit to donating half of their money to charity, and Whitman declined. In 2011, the foundation donated $2.5 million to Summit Public Schools, which operates several charter schools in the San Jose area.

Whitman currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico since 2025, she relocated to the state after she left her Ambassadorship in Kenya and her husband, Dr. Griffith Harsh IV, became the head of neurosurgery at the University of New Mexico.

In 2017, Whitman was the Commencement speaker for Carnegie Mellon University and was awarded an honorary doctorate degree.