By Marika Sboros
Greek-born American media executive Arianna Huffington has an iron will.
She exerted it to pull herself out of poverty in Greece, and move to Britain aged just 16. She drew on that will to enrol at Cambridge University, graduate with an MA in economics, and become the first foreign, and only the third ever, female president of the Cambridge Union at 21.
She drew on it again to move to the US, where she became a popular conservative in the mid-1990s, a liberal thereafter, and made a foray in politics – unsuccessful as it turned out. She dropped out after running as an independent candidate for Governor in the California recall election in 2003.
Huffington has no fear of failure, and says her mother taught her early on that it is simply a stepping stone to success.
So it has proved for her.
Now 64, she is probably best known as co-founder and Editor in Chief of The Huffington Post, the Pulitzer Prize-winning blog website she launched in 2005, that has been described as “one of the most popular English language news website son the planet”, with more than 75 million readers monthly. When AOL acquired it for $315 million in 2011, she became Editor In Chief of the Huffington Post Media Group.
But Huffington is just as well known for making a compelling case for a redefinition success in today’s world, and advocating a more spiritual aside to business. A prolific author, she has documented a new way of living in her 14th book, Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Wellbeing, Wisdom and Wonder.
Huffington serves on several boards, including El Pais, Prisa, the Centre for Public Integrity and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
She was a member of the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of New Champions in 2014.
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