As the 2016 presidential race continues, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz has announced Carly Fiorina as his running mate.
Here are 5 things to know about her:
She was a tech industry executive.
After dropping out of law school, Fiorina worked at AT&T as a management trainee at age 25 in 1979. She worked her way up the ranks, eventually becoming the first female officer in the company's network systems division. When AT&T decided to spin off its Western Electric and Bell Labs divisions to a new company in 1996, Fiorina was chosen to lead the company. She became CEO of Hewlett-Packard in 1999.
She was forced to resign from her Hewlett-Packard position.
Fiorina instituted changes to HP's structure that attempted to change company culture, streamlining divisions to make them more manageable. But she didn't meet the expectations of the HP board after she led a merger between HP and Compaq in anticipation of the dot-com boom. When HP stock prices didn't turn around after the merger, Fiorina had to resign. The New York Times reported in 2005 that she was offered a severance package worth $21.4 million.
She was an adviser to John McCain's 2008 campaign.
Fiorina served as an economic adviser in Sen. John McCain's campaign for president in 2008. She made a few gaffes, criticizing his running mate Sarah Palin as being unable to run HP during an interview with MSNBC. She also remarked in that same interview that she did not think McCain could run a major corporation. Fiorina's past with HP was also a source of criticism as she held the adviser position. She ultimately ended up being removed from the campaign.
She is a breast cancer survivor.
In 2009, Fiorina discovered that she had breast cancer and underwent chemotherapy, radiation and a double mastectomy. While running against Sen. Barbara Boxer for a California Senate position in 2010, Fiorina was hospitalized for complications after a surgery earlier that year. That surgery, in July 2010, was a reconstructive breast procedure, according to her campaign.
She was in the running for the Republican nomination for president.
Fiorina announced her presidential bid in a "Good Morning America" appearance in May 2015. "I think I'm the best person for the job because I understand how the economy actually works," she said. "I understand the world, who's in it." She suspended her campaign nine months later, making the announcement in a Facebook post. Since then, she has gradually expressed support for Cruz's campaign, building speculation that she would be his running mate, which was confirmed Wednesday.
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