Margaret Whitman Biography and Net Worth

Margaret “Meg” Whitman is the CEO of “quick-bite” streaming platform, Quibi, a company she joined in 2018.

Quibi was founded by longtime Hollywood executive Jeffrey Katzenberg and launched in April 2020. Whitman was tasked with making Quibi into a competitor in its market, going up against streaming superpowers Netflix and Hulu. Having already secured $1 billion in funding during her short tenure with the company, Whitman has signed high-profile talent from celebrities like Andy Samberg, Steph Curry, and Tyra Banks in her efforts to take the platform to the next level. 

Before Quibi, Whitman signed on with Hewlett Packard in 2011, first as part of its board of directors, and then later that same year as president and CEO. In 2015, she oversaw the company’s successful split into two separate organizations—HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, becoming CEO of the latter. 

In 2010, she famously ran for governor of California as a Republican after serving on the political campaigns of both Mitt Romey and John McCain. She lost to Jerry Brown, but spent more of her own money on the campaign than any other self-funded candidate at the time.

Prior to running for public office, Whitman spent 10 years at eBay, possibly her most storied leadership position to date. In 1998, when she first joined the company, it had just 30 employees and was making around $4 million in revenue a year. Her first day in the office, the website crashed. 

During her time with the company, Whitman redesigned the company’s website, walled off the areas where firearms and pornography were being listed (eventually banning all sales of firearms, tobacco, drugs, alcohol, animals, and body parts), and prepared the company for its 1998 IPO. When she left the company in 2008, it had grown to some 15,000 employees, bringing in billions of dollars annually. 

Whitman’s early career included leadership positions at Procter & Gamble, where she stood up to the company’s policy of not issuing credit cards to women; Bain & Company; The Walt Disney Company; DreamWorks; Stride Rite; Florists’ Transworld Delivery, a federation of commercial florists; and Hasbro, where she popularized Mr. Potato Head and the Teletubbies. 

Initially hoping to be a doctor, Whitman attended Princeton University for medicine. However, after a summer of selling ads for Princeton’s magazine, she switched her major to economics and later earned her M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. 

Whitman has donated $30 million to Princeton for a 500-student residential college bearing her name. She met her husband, Griffith Harsh IV, during her sophomore year at the university. They have two sons together.