Trailblazing
Meg
Whitman
says
Mom's
the
real
pioneer




By Meg News Channel




In her mind, Meg Whitman is not the former CEO of eBay.

She’s not a gubernatorial candidate, the one aiming to be California’s first female governor.

If you ask Whitman who she is, the answer comes simply, naturally.
She is her mother’s daughter.

This week, in front of a crowd of nearly 3,000 business women from across California, Whitman
shared stories of growing up with her mother -- a person she described as a tough, resilient and
caring woman who shaped Whitman’s character and taught her the values and morals that have
carried her far.

“She set me on a course in life through example and, on more than one occasion, a not-so-gentle
nudge,” Whitman said of her mother, Margaret Whitman, now 88 years old and living in Boston.
“Mom taught me to dream, to ignore the limits and throw away the templates, to push myself until
it hurt. Until I delivered the results in whatever it was I was doing.”

The intimate stories brought a smile to Meg Whitman’s face in this crowded auditorium in San
Francisco and to the faces of the women she addressed.

Though they had never met Margaret Whitman, they walked away feeling a personal connection to
the woman who has struggled, fought and lived life to its fullest. And they left feeling a personal
connection to Meg for opening up and sharing those stories, for explaining how and why she is who
she is today.

“I think it’s important that she spoke about having her mother to look toward when she was
growing up, as a person who really helped her and was there for her throughout her entire life,”
said Santa Clara resident Sophia Hayes after Meg’s speech. “She was so fortunate as to have that
every day as she was growing up. A lot of women do. But there are also a lot of women who don’t
have that example, who have to come to events like this to get that, to see that.”

Mom was real-life ‘Rosie the Riveter’

Even before Meg was born, her mother was paving the way for future female leaders like her
daughter.

It was World War II, and Meg’s father was in the Air Force in Guam. Margaret Whitman decided to
volunteer for the American Red Cross, and she was deployed to New Guinea, where she found out
the military base needed mechanics.
“She’d never looked under the hood of a car or fixed anything with a wrench,” Meg said. “But she
knew that’s where the critical need was and where she could make the biggest contribution. The
learning curve didn’t stall her, but in fact, it fueled her.”

More than 60 years later, Meg cherishes most this image of her mother, wearing coveralls, hands
dirty, greasing a truck engine. It’s the image that made it difficult for Meg to deny the capability
and power that a woman has over any task, if she sets her mind to it.

By the end of her duty tour, Meg’s mother was a fully-certified mechanic, working on trucks and
airplanes. She still talks about overhauling jeep engines faster than the men, Meg said with a grin.

“That’s right. Rosie the Riveter sort of paved the way for Meg the Manager,” she said.

Mom instills sense of adventure, goodwill

By the 1960s, Margaret Whitman had become a mother. But her sense of adventure had not
dissipated. Meg was 6 when her mother and Margaret’s best friend decided to take their children
and set out from Long Island on a three-month-long camping trip in the western United States.

There were no cell phones, no GPS, no hotels. Only the open road, books, games and the
entertainment that eight children and two moms could come up with on their own.

They visited the Grand Tetons in Wyoming, Mesa Verde and the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and
finally, California.

The last stop on the trip was, to Meg, the most memorable. She fell in love with the Golden State
and remembers thinking how wonderful it would be to live here all the time. Today she is grateful
to her mother for giving her the chance to see California and believes it was a small marker that
pointed the way in which she was headed.

In 1972, Margaret Whitman set out again, this time for China. She was part of a delegation led by
actress Shirley MacLaine, who was assembling a diverse group of American women to explore
China and make a documentary film called, ‘Women Hold Up Half The Sky.’ China in 1972 was
closed to most of the world, and it was not a comfortable place to be. But Margaret was asked to
go, and she jumped at the opportunity.

“I would say the trip was an awakening for her,” Meg said. “Mom had settled down with Dad after
the war, but the journey to China brought out the mechanic in her again. She saw professional
women, technicians, artists, women following different paths both in the American delegation and
in China, and she began to understand the opportunities that were available to her, to me and my
sister, and so many other women.”

In the years that followed her trip, Margaret learned the Mandarin dialect and visited China 90
times. She led other groups, started her own business and became one of the preeminent tour
group leaders for political delegations to China. She became well-known among government
leaders there, and when eBay expanded to China, Meg said, her mother was more of a celebrity
than eBay was.

Mother’s example one worth following

Over the years and through all of these experiences, Meg’s mother instilled a wealth of core values
in her. She watched as her mother never shied away from opportunity or from people in need. She
saw her jump to action when called and take on nontraditional roles for any woman in the 1940s
and 1950s.
She saw her mother as a leader, a businesswoman, a diplomat, a peacemaker. She saw her as a
role model.

“Values are the composition of our humanity,” Meg said. “They’re our ethical DNA. We get them
from our families, our friends, our schooling, our experiences -- both good and bad. They nourish
our sense of self and our world view. They are our foundation for a happy life. Without them, we
are rudderless, powerless to find our way in an ever-more confusing world.”

Because of her mother, Meg today believes that people are basically good. She believes in the
power of listening, that everyone has something to contribute, that everyone has a unique set of
talents. She believes people must invest in their relationships with those who provide energy and
courage. She believes that nothing is worth doing if it compromises your integrity.

And she believes that we must always be brave, and sometimes we must be courageous.

“Because things worth doing are often hard,” she said.

As Meg moves forward with the next chapter of her life, as she seeks to save the state that she fell
in love with as a child and again as an adult, she says she hopes she can continue being her
mother’s daughter, defying the odds and bringing those values to life.

“As women we take on many roles all at the same time. Sometimes society still tries to limit us.
But for us, here in this room, we have never let that stop us,” Meg told the business women
gathered in San Francisco. “If there’s one message that I can leave you with today, it’s that you
should continue to draw closer, to identify your core values and continue to create positive change
in this world.”

Meg News Channel is a fully dedicated media team, which produces original video and print content for the
Meg Whitman Campaign. To learn more, go to http://www.megwhitman.com/media_center.php

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