Time magazine named her one of the most influential women on the planet. And after taking a glance at her life, that should come as no surprise.
From Greece to Cambridge
Arianna’s story began in Athens in 1950. She was the daughter of Konstantinos Stasinopoúlou, the owner of an unsuccessful newspaper. Her childhood was not particularly happy: in keeping with local traditions, Arianna’s parents wanted her to get married rather than pursue a career in journalism, her lifelong passion. Despite their protests, Arianna decided to move to Cambridge at the age of 16 to study economics at Girton College. At the time, she was the first foreign female student on campus.
Early difficulties
It wasn’t all plain sailing, but thanks to her courage Arianna was able to turn the difficulties into a desire to keep developing and learning. Arianna was well and truly out of her comfort zone – one need only glance at that pronounced Greek nose she was so proud of or listen to her foreign accent. In 1981, she was accused of plagiarism in her first book, a biography of Maria Callas, with the issue settled out of court. In the 1980s, Arianna moved to New York to focus on journalism full time. When her marriage to Michael Huffington ended in 1997, Arianna decided to concentrate on her daughters and dedicate her time to politics. Yet she struggled again, gaining less than 1% of the vote in her bid to become Governor of California.
“Many of the most important discussions on politics and society were happening on the internet, but lots of people with strong ideas where cut off from that world”
Arianna’s intuition
In 2005, Arianna had a meeting that would later change her life. Together with Jonah Peretti (the founder of BuzzFeed) and Kenneth Lerer, she decided to open the first-ever online newspaper. The idea was for a blog-style website which would bring together various famous personalities and have them write the articles themselves.
“Many of the most important discussions on politics and society were happening on the internet, but lots of people with strong ideas where cut off from that world,” she explained in a recent interview. “Our platform allowed those voices to participate in online dialogue too.” The first bloggers to contribute were John Cusack, Larry David and Arthur Schlesinger.
From that moment, traditional newspapers decided to start investing in the internet too.
The Huffington Post today
During Obama’s presidential campaign, the blog became a point of reference for the world. In 2011, AOL bought the Huffington Post for $315m, while in 2012 it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. It is now part of the Huffington Post Media Group, which includes TechCrunch. The Italian version, which launched in September 2012, is run by Lucia Annunziata.
Arianna Huffington recently said that she wants to give up running the publication to dedicate herself to a new start-up: Thrive Global. Given that constant evolution and hunger for change have been the guiding lights of her life, there is good reasons to hope that there is still a lot more to come from Arianna in the future.
If you would like to know more about Arianna Huffington, check out the links below.
http://www.millionaire.it/arianna-huffington-ora-lancia-una-nuova-startup/
http://www.successo.com/2015/03/13/la-storia-di-arianna-huffington/