Meg Whitman was born on August 4, 1965 in Cold Springs Harbor New York. (Biography.com Editors, 2015) Whitman was always bright and hard-working; she graduated from high school after only three years. (Biography.com Editors, 2015) Following her graduation Meg enrolled at Princeton University, where she was in the first class of women to go through all four years and earned a bachelor's degree in economics. She then took on the MBA program at Harvard Business School, graduating in 1979. (Biography.com Editors, 2015) She notes in her Memoir, The Power of Many that there were no particular career aspirations laid out for her or her sister Anne. “I was a very strong student; I finished high school in three years and graduated as one of the top ten students in my class. But the idea that I might become a businesswoman or anything in particular was not …show more content…
“At my first job after business school, I received a truly world-class education in product branding at P&G.” (Whitman, M. & Hamilton, J. 2010 location 1793 of 4046) She left her job at P&G to move with her husband Griff to San Francisco to complete his residency at Stanford Medical Center. She took a consulting job at Bain & Co in 1981 and stayed there until 1989. “I became an all-around athlete at Bain because of the variety of projects and business challenges I worked on. These experiences prepared me to do so many different things for the rest of my life.” (Whitman, M. & Hamilton, J. 2010 location 1793 of 4046). After Bain, Whitman went on to be senior vice president of marketing at Walt Disney Company from 1989 to 1992. She then moved from Los Angeles back to Massachusetts to become division president of Stride Rite Company from 1992 to 1995. She was recruited to be president and CEO of FTD from 1995 to 1997 and left to become general manager of the Playskool division of Hasbro in 1997. (Green,