Thursday, August 27, 2015

"I was in the room for many of the decisions she made. I can attest to the strength of Carly's leadership, the accuracy of her vision and the quality of her management"



The super PAC bought a full-page ad pushing back against criticism from columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin who described Fiorina's tenure as CEO of Hewlett-Packard as "not so sterling." Tom Perkins, a venture capitalist and member of HP's board of directors during Fiorina's tenure, penned a response titled "The Truth About Carly."

"I was in the room for many of the decisions she made. I can attest to the strength of Carly's leadership, the accuracy of her vision and the quality of her management," he wrote. "Carly was an excellent CEO. She led HP through one of the worst economic times in decades. Less than two years into Carly's leadership, the dot-com bubble went bust. Silicon Valley was in chaos. Companies were shedding jobs almost daily. ... While other Silicon Valley icons like Sun Microsystems disappeared, Carly's vision and execution not only helped to save HP but made it a strong, more versatile company that could compete in the changing technology sector."

...Perkins' advertisement counters Sorkin's account of Fiorina's dismissal.

"Critics often claim was fired at HP because she was unsuccessful. As a member of the board, I can tell you this is not true," Perkins wrote. "You see, some board members wanted to micro-manage the company, hand picking friends and allies to run divisions. This is no way to run a global company and Carly had the strength of character and courage of conviction to stand up to it and ultimately she lost her job because of it."

"While lesser leaders would have accepted offers of transition plans and graceful resignations, Carly would have none of that. Carly demanded to be fired. In order to restore peace to the board I voted to fire her. That was a mistake."
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