Arianna Huffington
Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington (née Ariadnē-Anna Stasinopoúlou; Greek: Αριάδνη-Άννα Στασινοπούλου, pronounced [ariˈaðni ˈana stasinoˈpulu]; born July 15, 1950) is a Greek American author, syndicated columnist and businesswoman. She is a co-founder of The Huffington Post, the founder and CEO of Thrive Global,[1] and the author of fifteen books.[2] She has been named to Time magazine's list of the worlds 100 most influential people[3] and the Forbes Most Powerful Women list.[4]
Arianna Huffington
- Founder of The Huffington Post
- Founder and CEO of Thrive Global
- Author of 15 books
Democratic (2004–present)
- Republican (before 2003)
- Independent (2003–2004)
2
Huffington serves on numerous boards, including Onex, and Global Citizen.
She is the author of fifteen books, although two have been dogged by allegations of plagiarism, one of which she paid another author, an out of court settlement. Her last two books, Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder and The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life, One Night at a Time, both became international bestsellers.[5]
Huffington, the former wife of Republican congressman Michael Huffington, co-founded The Huffington Post, which is now owned by BuzzFeed.[6][1] She was a popular conservative commentator in the mid-1990s, after which, in the late 1990s, she offered liberal points of view in public, while remaining involved in business endeavors.[7] In 2003, she ran as an independent candidate for governor in the California recall election and lost.[8] In 2009, Huffington was No. 12 in Forbes first-ever list of the Most Influential Women In Media.[9] She has also moved up to No. 42 in The Guardian's Top 100 in Media List.[10] As of 2014, she was listed by Forbes as the 52nd Most Powerful Woman in the World. She had moved to 77nd as of 2018 and dropped off the list as of 2019.[4]
In 2011, AOL acquired The Huffington Post for US$315 million and made Huffington the president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which included The Huffington Post and then-existing AOL properties including AOL Music, Engadget, Patch Media, and StyleList.[11]
She stepped down from her role at The Huffington Post in August 2016 to focus on a new startup, Thrive Global, a behavior change technology company with the mission of improving productivity and health outcomes.[12]
Early life[edit]
Huffington was born Ariadnē-Anna Stasinopoúlou (Αριάδνη-Άννα Στασινοπούλου) in Athens, Greece,[4] in 1950,[13] the daughter of Konstantinos (a journalist and management consultant) and Elli (née Georgiadi) Stasinopoulou, and is the sister of Agapi (an author, speaker, and performer).[14] She moved to the United Kingdom at the age of 16 and studied economics at Girton College, Cambridge, where she was the first foreign, and third female,[15] president of the Cambridge Union.[16] She studied abroad in India, and told IANS in an email interview "India has long held a special place in my heart, from the time I went to study comparative religion at Visva-Bharati University".[17]
In 1971, Huffington appeared in an edition of Face the Music along with Bernard Levin. A relationship developed, of which she wrote, after his death: "He wasn't just the big love of my life, he was a mentor as a writer and a role model as a thinker."[18] Huffington began writing books in the 1970s, with editorial help from Levin. The two traveled to music festivals around the world for the BBC. They spent summers patronizing three-star restaurants in France. At the age of 30, she remained deeply in love with him but longed to have children; Levin never wanted to marry or have children. Huffington concluded that she had to break away, and moved to New York City in 1980.[19]
From March to April 1980, Huffington joined Bob Langley as the co-host of BBC1's late-night talk and entertainment show Saturday Night at the Mill, appearing in just five editions before being dropped from the program.[20] She was replaced by Jenny Hanley.
Claims of plagiarism[edit]
Huffington was accused of plagiarism for copying material for her book Maria Callas (1981); the claims were settled out of court in 1981, with Callas' biographer Gerald Fitzgerald being paid "in the low five figures."[64][65][66]
Lydia Gasman, an art history professor at the University of Virginia, has claimed that Huffington's 1988 biography of Pablo Picasso, Picasso: Creator and Destroyer, included themes similar to those in Gasman's unpublished four-volume Ph.D. thesis. "What she did was steal twenty years of my work," Gasman told Maureen Orth in 1994. Gasman did not file suit. Huffington denied the allegations.[21]
Religious views[edit]
Huffington has had a lifelong interest in spirituality; in her youth, together with Bernard Levin, she explored the Rajneesh movement, later dating Erhard Seminars Training founder Werner Erhard and going on to become affiliated with John-Roger Hinkins' Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness.[21][67] In 1994, she published a self-help book titled The Fourth Instinct, outlining her view that people should rise above the three basic instincts of survival, power, and sex to find their higher and better selves.[68]
Personal life[edit]
Huffington is Greek by birth[68] and became a naturalized American citizen in 1990.[71] She met her husband Michael Huffington in 1985.[72] They were married a year later, on April 12, 1986,[73] and have two daughters, Isabella and Christina.[74]
The couple later moved to Santa Barbara, California, and, in 1992, Michael ran as a Republican for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, winning the election by a significant margin. In 1994, he narrowly lost the race for the U.S. Senate seat in California to incumbent Dianne Feinstein.[75]
The couple divorced in 1997.[76] In 1998, Michael Huffington disclosed that he was bisexual, saying, "I know now that my sexuality is part of who I am, I've been through a long process of finding out the truth about me."[77][78] He stated, "In December 1985, in my Houston townhouse I sat down with [Arianna] and told her that I had dated women and men so that she would be aware of it... The good news was that it was not an issue for her."[21]