Arianna Huffington

Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington (née Ariadnē-Anna Stasinopoúlou; Greek: Αριάδνη-Άννα Στασινοπούλου, pronounced [ariˈaðni ˈana stasinoˈpulu]; born July 15, 1950) 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 No. 12 in Forbes first-ever list of the Most Influential Women In Media. She has also moved up to No. 42 in The Guardian's 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.

Huffington was born Ariadnē-Anna Stasinopoúlou (Αριάδνη-Άννα Στασινοπούλου) in Athens, Greece, in 1950, 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). 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.