ACG National Capital
The Association for Corporate Growth National Capital Chapter’s largest annual event of the year, the Strategic Growth Conference, is coming up on April 16, 2012.
The Strategic Growth Conference and ACG Dealsource and Capital Forum are an excellent opportunity for ACG members to network, learn business best practices and hear from a wide range of excellent speakers from across the business world.
This year’s speakers are now being announced, and we’ll be profiling each of the speakers here on the ACG National Capital Blog. The first announced speaker is none other than the world renown business leader and best selling author, Carly Fiorina.
Carly is best known as the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard Company (HP). However, many are unaware that Carly is a self-made woman that worked her way through undergraduate and graduate school before starting her business career as a secretary. She would later go on to become the first woman to lead a Fortune 20 company.
Carly joined AT&T in 1980 where she worked her way up to become vice president of network systems, and eventually ran the North America sales division. She was tapped to lead the corporate spin-off of the company’s Western Electric and Bell Labs divisions, which would come to be known as Lucent. Under her leadership, Lucent raised $3 billion in one of the most successful IPO’s in U.S. history.
After her successes with AT&T and Lucent, Carly went on to serve as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) from 1999 to 2005, leading the company through the dot-com bust and the worst technology recession in 25 years. During her tenure, HP’s revenues doubled, from $44 billion to $88 billion, with improved profitability in every product category.
Carly has proven her leadership in tough times. Her pursuit of the controversial merger with Compaq Computer is now acknowledged to be the most successful merger in high-tech history and positioned HP to become the first $100 billion information technology company, creating market leadership positions for the company in every one of its product lines.
Carly’s professional success led to her being named number one on Fortune magazine’s list of the 50 Most Powerful Women in American Business for six consecutive years (1998-2004).
Carly is also a highly sought out speaker, and former candidate for the U.S. Senate of California. She served on both the Board of Business Executives for National Security and the Advisory Group for Transformational Diplomacy for the Department of State. She was also a member of the Defense Business Board. Currently she chairs the Board of the Technology Policy Institute, and is a Global Envoy for Lance Armstrong’s LIVESTRONG organization.
Carly has a bachelor’s degree in medieval history and philosophy from Stanford University. She holds a master’s degree in business administration from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland at College Park and a master of science degree from MIT’s Sloan School
For more information on the Strategic Growth Conference, or to register to hear Carly Fiorina and the rest of our featured speakers, visit the ACG National Capital Web site.