NSB Logo Carly Fiorina Carly Fiorina

Carly Fiorina

Speaker

Mason Neck, Virginia, USA

Former Chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard

Carly Fiorina is the former Chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, and the first woman to lead a Fortune 50 Company. Her experience spans from secretary to CEO, from public to private, and from for-profit to non-profit. Under Carly’s leadership, HP’s revenue grew, innovation tripled, growth quadrupled, and HP became the 11th largest company in the U.S. From the stage, Carly shares her proven leadership playbook that anyone can apply to transform their business. 

Keynote Speeches

Virtual Keynotes & Webinars
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From Secretary to CEO: A Transformative Story of Leadership

Solving problems, effectively empowering employees, and driving results are the expectations of today’s leaders, at all levels and in every sector. In a powerful, pragmatic presentation, Carly shares her transformative career story and delivers reflections and lessons learned from her journey. 

Based on her own renowned experiences, and with an innate ability to help others reach their highest leadership potential, Carly imparts how leaders can be clear eyed about their current state, optimistic about their future, and deliberate about getting the results they want.

Building a High Performance Culture: Lessons from a High Profile Assignment

As CEO of Hewlett Packard, Carly Fiorina successfully tackled complicated business challenges, strategic focus, product innovation, and mergers and integration all during the dot.com boom and bust and the worst technology recession in 25 years.

From her renowned leadership of HP, Carly shares her personal account of what it takes to create a high performance culture. She openly discusses navigating a challenging path filled with hurdles like major acquisition, integration, and transformational change.

For today’s organizations who are forced to adjust in an incessantly volatile business environment, she provides a blueprint for navigating uncertainty, managing change, and building a high performance culture all critical keys to empowering and driving results.

Unlocking Potential: Leaders Exist Everywhere

Throughout her career, Carly Fiorina has developed leaders and problem solvers in nearly every sector, from for profits and non profits, to faith based communities and academia. She believes that leadership is not about an impressive title or possessing the corner office, but about effectively solving problems and unlocking the potential of those around you.

Based on her work leading the Unlocking Potential Foundation, Carly delivers a powerful presentation that inspires, empowers, and connects employees at every level. She shares her proven leadership philosophy, which is based on a set of human behaviors and characteristics that everyone can develop and deploy, as well as a set of practical tools that enable effective problem solving.

Diversity in Today’s Workplace: More than a Nice to Have; It’s a Must Have

Today, more than ever, a successful workplace must be comprised of teams with innovative, diverse perspectives who are empowered to solve their sector’s most challenging problems.

During her career, Carly Fiorina shattered the glass ceiling by cultivating diverse teams, from top to bottom. She achieved success and solved the critical problems directly ahead of her only by surrounding herself with a myriad of perspectives and empowering her diverse teams to drive real change.

Carly’s commanding presentation on diversity is built on her direct experience and personal knowledge that, to grow, learn, and solve tough problems, you must invite new perspectives to the table. 

Learning from Our Past: Linking History to Today

History can and should be strategically leveraged to help us navigate today’s extremely turbulent times. Instead, too often, we romanticize history, confusing nostalgia for the real thing. Or, we compartmentalize the past and focus only on those aspects that serve a particular rhetorical or political purpose. Sometimes, we even place historic figures on a lofty pedestal that renders them both un-human and un-real, and we cannot expect to emulate what is out of reach.

With her deep understanding of history, Carly Fiorina offers an insightful assessment of how to, and what we can learn from, our past. She connects historic events and figures to the current complex issues confronting both our nation and the world.

 

Audience reviews:

  • Carly is an expert in the field of leadership development and strategic planning. Her virtual speech to our team was exceptional, lifting our spirits in these challenging times and offering tactical advice to advance our problem-solving skills. Through her thoughtful and comprehensive approach, our organization was able to leverage her strategies to force-multiply our efforts to better serve disaster survivors.
    - Chief Operating Officer, Disaster Services Corporation
  • Carly is someone I have known for years—she is one of the most engaging “on-point” speakers I know. She is as comfortable speaking with fellow CEO’s as with students of all ages. She is unabashed in her commitment to raising the level of leadership in our country. Through her experience and life lessons as the first female CEO of a Fortune 50 company—long before “Me Too” and the “Black Lives Matter” movements—is adept at speaking on empathy and compassion for these times.
    - Director, Ford’s Theatre

Speaker Biography

Carly Fiorina is a true leader and a seasoned problem solver. Her mission is to inspire, equip and connect individuals and teams to seize opportunities, face challenges, and accelerate impact in their communities.

Carly shares her leadership experience and approach to problem solving in a variety of ways. In addition to her regular speeches to students, businesses and non profits, she is the founder and Chairman of Unlocking Potential, a non profit organization that invests in human potential by supporting local leaders who are solving problems in their communities.

Carly started out as a secretary for a 9 person real estate business and eventually became Chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard – making her the first woman ever to lead a Fortune 50 company. During her tenure at HP, the company received numerous civic recognitions, including being named one of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens by Business Ethics Magazine, one of the 100 Best Companies for Working Mothers by Working Mother Magazine, receiving a 100% rating by The Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index, and being named one of the World’s Most Respected Companies by The Financial Times and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

After leaving HP, Carly focused her efforts on giving back. Prior to Unlocking Potential, she served as the Chairman of Good360, the world’s largest product philanthropy organization, and as Chairman of Opportunity International, a Christian-based organization that lifts millions out of poverty around the globe through micro-finance. She also founded the One Woman Initiative in partnership with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to engage and empower women in Pakistan, Egypt, India and the Philippines through increased access to economic opportunity.

Carly was appointed by President Bush and CIA Director Michael Hayden to serve as the Chairman of the External Advisory Board of the CIA after 9/11. In this capacity, she held the highest clearances available to a civilian, and focused her efforts on CIA recruitment policies, information technology capabilities and organizational integration. In 2015, Carly launched a campaign for President. Running as a political outsider, Carly spoke about empowering and engaging citizens to take back government from a political ruling class that has failed to deliver results. 

In February 2019, Carly and The Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America began an academic partnership. Carly was appointed the Distinguished Clinical Professor in Leadership and together they are integrating Carly’s leadership and problem-solving curriculum into the business student experience.