ARIANNA HUFFINGTON

1950–

Greek-born Arianna Huffington is best known as the founder of leading news website the Huffington Post and CEO of Thrive Global. Her remarkable vision and business successes have earned her placings in Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people and the Forbes list of the world’s 100 most powerful women.

Arianna Huffington was born Ariadne-Anna Stasinopoulou in Athens, where she was raised in a one-bedroom apartment. She studied economics at Cambridge University, becoming the third female president of the Cambridge Union. In 1974, aged just 24, she wrote The Female Woman, criticizing some aspects of women’s liberation, and has since published another 15 books.

In 1980, after working for BBC radio and television as a journalist and presenter, Arianna moved to New York and married merchant banker, later congressman, Michael Huffington in 1986. She made a career as a radio commentator in Los Angeles and in 2003 ran for governor of California. The campaign failed, but she learned about harnessing the power of the internet, having raised almost $1 million online.

Following the 2004 presidential election, Huffington and businessman Kenneth Lerer raised the capital needed to set up a 24/7 news platform and blog. The Huffington Post was launched in May 2005 with Huffington as editor in chief. It became one of the world’s most recognizable media brands and effectively made Huffington a brand herself, securing her regular television appearances and a place at the annual World Economic Forum. Regional versions of the site were launched in 2007. In 2011, Huffington sold the site to AOL for more than $300 million, becoming president and editor in chief of the company’s Huffington Post Media Group.

In August 2016, Huffington announced that she was leaving the Huffington Post to set up a digital platform dedicated to health and wellness. Having identified a need for strategies to tackle stress and burnout in order to improve performance, she launched Thrive Global in November 2016.