Arianna Huffington


Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington is a Greek and American author, syndicated columnist and businesswoman.
She is a co-founder of HuffPost, the founder and CEO of Thrive Global, and the author of fifteen books. She has been named in Time magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people and the Forbes Most Powerful Women list. Huffington serves on numerous boards, including Onex and Global Citizen.
Two of her books have been dogged by allegations of plagiarism, for 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.
Huffington, the former wife of Republican congressman Michael Huffington, co-founded The Huffington Post, which was later acquired by BuzzFeed. 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. In 2003, she ran as an independent candidate for governor in the California recall election and lost. In 2009, Huffington was in Forbes first-ever list of the Most Influential Women In Media. She has also moved up to in The Guardians Top 100 in Media List. 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.
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.
She stepped down from her role at The Huffington Post in August 2016 to focus on a new start-up, Thrive Global, a behavior-change technology company with the mission of improving productivity and health outcomes.

Early life

Huffington was born Ariadnē-Anna Stasinopoúlou in Athens, Greece, in 1950, the daughter of Konstantinos and Elli Stasinopoulou, and is the sister of Agapi. 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, president of the Cambridge Union. 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."
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." 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.
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.

Career

In 1973, Arianna wrote a book titled The Female Woman, attacking the Women's Liberation movement in general and Germaine Greer's 1970 The Female Eunuch in particular. In the book she wrote, "Women's Lib claims that the achievement of total liberation would transform the lives of all women for the better; the truth is that it would transform only the lives of women with strong lesbian tendencies."
In the late 1980s, Huffington wrote several articles for National Review. In 1981, she wrote a biography of Maria Callas, Maria Callas – The Woman Behind the Legend, and in 1989, a biography of Pablo Picasso, Picasso: Creator and Destroyer.
Huffington rose to the national U.S. prominence during the unsuccessful Senate bid in 1994 by her then husband, Michael Huffington, a Republican. She became known as a reliable supporter of conservative causes such as Newt Gingrich's "Republican Revolution" and Bob Dole's 1996 candidacy for president. She teamed up with liberal comedian Al Franken as the conservative half of "Strange Bedfellows" during Comedy Central's coverage of the 1996 U.S. presidential election. For her work, she and the writing team of Politically Incorrect were nominated for a 1997 Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Variety or Music Program.
As late as 1998, Huffington still aligned herself with the Republican Party. During that year, she did a weekly radio show in Los Angeles called Left, Right & Center, that "match her, the so-called 'right-winger', against self-described centrist policy wonk Matt Miller, and veteran 'leftist' journalist Robert Scheer." In an April 1998 profile in The New Yorker, Margaret Talbot wrote, "Most recently, she has cast herself as a kind of Republican Spice Girl – an endearingly ditzy right wing gal-about-town who is a guilty pleasure for people who know better." Huffington described herself by side-stepping the traditional party divide, saying "the right–left divisions are so outdated now. For me, the primary division is between people who are aware of what I call 'the two nations', and those who are not."
Huffington, of Greek background, opposed the NATO intervention in Serbia during the Yugoslav Wars and in 2000, she co-convened the "Shadow Conventions", which appeared at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia and the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles at Patriotic Hall.
Huffington headed The Detroit Project, a public interest group lobbying automakers to start producing cars running on alternative fuels. The project's 2003 TV ads, which equated driving sport utility vehicles to funding terrorism, proved to be particularly controversial, with some stations refusing to run them.
In a 2004 appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, she announced her endorsement of John Kerry by saying, "When your house is burning down, you don't worry about the remodeling." Huffington was a panel speaker during the 2005 California Democratic Party State Convention, held in Los Angeles. She also spoke at the 2004 College Democrats of America Convention in Boston, which was held in conjunction with the 2004 Democratic National Convention. She was also a regular panelist on the nationally syndicated weekend radio program, Both Sides Now with Huffington & Matalin, hosted by Mark Green.
Huffington serves on the board of directors of the Berggruen Institute, the Center for Public Integrity, Uber, and Onex Corporation.
She is also a One Young World Counsellor, speaking to delegates at summits in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2013 and Dublin, Ireland, in 2014. She spoke about her "third metric" for success and the value of youth leadership.
File:Secretary Kerry Speaks With Arianna Huffington in Davos.jpg|thumb|Huffington speaks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry during a dinner hosted by Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2014
On May 22, 2016, she gave the commencement address and received an honorary degree from Colby College in Waterville, Maine. Also in 2016, she was named to Oprah Winfrey's SuperSoul100 list of visionaries and influential leaders.
Huffington has authored 15 books in her career. She faced 37 rejections before securing a publishing contract for her second book. Huffington also wrote the foreword for Marina Khidekel's book 'Your Time to Thrive,' published in 2021.

''The Huffington Post''

In 2005, Huffington founded The Huffington Post with Andrew Breitbart, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti. It was launched on May 9, 2005, as a commentary outlet, blog, and an alternative to news aggregators such as the Drudge Report. The site historically published work from both paid staff writers and reporters and unpaid bloggers. In February 2011, AOL acquired The Huffington Post for US$315 million, making Huffington editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group. In 2012, The Huffington Post became the first commercially run United States digital media enterprise to win a Pulitzer Prize. In 2016, Huffington left The Huffington Post.

Thrive Global

In 2016 Huffington stepped down from her positions at AOL and Huffington Post to launch her new enterprise, Thrive Global, which claims to offer "science-based solutions" to end stress and burnout.
  • Meditative Story Podcast – In August 2019, Thrive Global launched the podcast Meditative Story in partnership with WaitWhat – a media company led by former TED executives June Cohen and Deron Triff. The podcast supposedly combines first-person stories with meditation prompts and original music to create a "mindfulness experience" in audio. Variety has described it as "part first-person narrative podcast and part guided meditation." Forbes has described it as "a completely new kind of listening experience that blends intimate first-person stories with mindfulness prompts, enveloped in beautiful music composition." Huffington described Meditative Story as "a response to a deep cultural need in our hyper sped up world to have a moment to recharge. The podcast is a tool-set for wellness combining intimate storytelling, that we’re all hardwired to respond to, plus moments of reflection." The podcast's first season featured stories from Krista Tippett, NPR Host Peter Sagal, travel writer Pico Iyer, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Beautycon Media's Moj Mahdara, actor Josh Radnor, and astronomer Michelle Thaller, among others.
  • Thrive Global Podcast – In 2017, Thrive Global launched a podcast with iHeart Radio featuring Huffington as host.