3/15/01

Dawn Levy, News Service (650) 725-1944; e-mail: dawnlevy@stanford.edu

Carly Fiorina to speak at Stanford's 110th Commencement

Carleton (Carly) S. Fiorina, chairman and chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) and a 1976 graduate of Stanford, has been chosen to deliver this year's Commencement address on Sunday, June 17. Fiorina will address a generation whose lives have been changed and challenged by technology as never before.

“As a Stanford history major and the current CEO of one of the largest tech companies in the world, she embodies the best of this institution,” said Delphine Tuot, a senior class president and major in biological sciences who will graduate with honors this June. “Ms. Fiorina is the ideal candidate to discuss the journey by which one learns how to be true to oneself and decide upon a path that engages both the mind and the heart. On behalf of the class of 2001, I hope that her speech will offer motivation to all students to contribute creativity, leadership and passion to their community throughout all of their future endeavors.”

President John Hennessy described Fiorina as “a humanist who has risen to great prominence within the technology industry” and called HP “a company at the heart of the Stanford family.

“We truly are honored that Carly Fiorina has accepted our invitation to speak at Stanford's 110th Commencement,” he said. “Her life experiences, including her experience as a student at Stanford and the professional choices she has made along the way, will be a source of inspiration to our graduating students, their parents and the faculty.”

On July 17, 1999, Fiorina became president and chief executive officer of HP, the largest consumer IT company in the world and the second largest technology firm in the world, with more than 88,000 employees and fiscal year 2000 revenues of $49 billion. A week later, she was elected to the company's board of directors, and last September, she was named chair of the board. Her responsibilities focus on improving the company's profitability, innovation, inventiveness, service and usefulness to customers.

Fiorina began her career as a salesperson for AT&T and spent nearly 20 years with AT&T and Lucent Technologies. Fiorina holds a bachelor's degree in history from Stanford, 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.

 

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By Dawn Levy