"Never sell your soul"

Carly Fiorina made headlines when she was appointed as CEO of HP (Hewlett-Packard), one the biggest computer and IT company in the world, in 1999. It catapulted her into the limelight as one of the most influencial women in corporate America and she was chosen 6 years in a row as Fortune magazine's most powerful woman in business.

As CEO, Fiorina made some drastics decisions regarding the company's direction including the highly debated HP-Compaq merger. I was personally affected by the decision since my laptop was still under warranty at that time and suddenly I had to go from the old service center in Jalan Semangat/Jalan Bersatu, PJ (near the Colgate factory in Section 14) to the new one currently at Bukit Damansara.

She made headlines again earlier this year when she was asked by the board to resign after seeing the company performing inconsistently under her control. She parted ways with HP with a cool US$42 million in severance payment package.

Since then she mantained a low profile and shied away from the media radar. She finally made her public appearence recently on May 7 at the North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University where she delivered a speech at their graduation ceremony. Calling it her 'Mother's Day gift', she shared with the audience her experiences rising up the corporate ladder as a woman and probably for the first time some clues on how she really feels about her ousting from HP. This is one of the final parts of her speech:

Most people will judge you by what they see on the outside. Only you and God will know what's on the inside. But at the end of your life, if people ask you what your greatest accomplishment was, my guess is, it will be something that happened inside you, that no one else ever saw, something that had nothing to do with outside success, and everything to do with how you decide to live in the world.

Earlier she mentioned:

For 25 years, when people have asked me for career advice, what I always tell them is don't give up what you have inside. Never sell your soul because no one can ever pay you back.

How I wish speeches at Malaysian university/college convocations are like this. My thanks to The Buck Stops Here for posting the transcript.