English: Cara Carleton "Carly" Fiorina (née Sneed; September 6, 1954) is an American politician and former business executive who currently chairs the non-profit philanthropic organization Good360.

Starting in 1980, Fiorina rose through the ranks to become an executive at AT&T and its equipment and technology spin-off, Lucent Technologies, Inc. As chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard (HP) from 1999 to 2005, she was the first woman to lead a top 20 company as ranked by Fortune magazine.

In 2002, Fiorina oversaw the biggest high-tech merger in history up to that time, with rival computer company Compaq, which made HP the world's largest personal computer manufacturer. The deal was controversial as analysts were not convinced of its strategic value and it was publicly opposed by several board members and shareholders. Following HP's gain in market share as a result of the 2002 merger, Fiorina laid off 30,000 U.S. employees. By 2004 the number of HP employees was about the same as the pre-merger total of HP and Compaq combined, and that 2004 number included roughly 8,000 employees of companies acquired by HP since 2001.

On February 9, 2005, the HP board of directors forced Fiorina to resign as chief executive officer and chairman over disagreements about the company's performance, disappointing earning reports, and her resistance to transferring authority to division heads. At that time, HP had about 150,000 employees. Its stock price had fallen by approximately half its value compared to when Fiorina had started, while the overall NASDAQ index had decreased by about a quarter owing to turbulence in the tech sector.

After leaving HP, Fiorina served on the boards of several organizations/ She was an adviser to Republican John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. She won a three-person race for the Republican nomination for the United States Senate in California in 2010, but lost the general election to incumbent Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer by 10 points.

On May 4, 2015, Fiorina announced her candidacy for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election.

Every four years, as America’s campaign cycle rumbles back to life, two of the country’s smaller states again return to the national spotlight.

Taking advantage of this political stage, The Seventy Four aims to bring the urgent conversation of America’s K-12 education system to both Iowa and New Hampshire in the coming months.

As first reported in The New York Times, The Seventy Four, a non-partisan, non-profit news website about education, announced it will be hosting and organizing two 2015 Education Summits beginning in August. Sponsored by the American Federation for Children, the nation’s leading school-choice advocacy organization, and organized in partnership with The Des Moines Register, the first-of-its-kind summits will gather prominent elected officials, political influencers, and education thought leaders to discuss the challenges now facing America’s education system.

“Last year, 1.3 million children dropped out of school, and U.S. students have flatlined on national and international tests,” said Betsy DeVos, chairman of the American Federation for Children. “It’s time to have a national conversation and no better time than as we look to 2016.” (The Seventy Four receives support from the Dick & Betsy DeVos Family Foundation.)

The first of the 2015 Education Summits will be held in New Hampshire on Aug. 19 and will be moderated by The Seventy Four co-founder and Editor-in-Chief Campbell Brown and others. Confirmed speakers (thus far) include Governor Jeb Bush, Governor Chris Christie, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, Governor Bobby Jindal, Governor John Kasich and Governor Scott Walker. (Check out The Seventy Four's detailed education profiles of the six GOP leaders participating Wednesday) Additional New Hampshire speakers will be confirmed in the coming weeks. Watch The74Million.org and EdSummits2015.org for new announcements, and check back for video and updates from both summits.

“These summits are an unprecedented opportunity to have an honest and intelligent discussion with our leaders about the failures of the education system”

The second summit, to be held in Iowa in October, will be co-hosted by The Seventy Four and The Des Moines Register, Iowa’s most influential news outlet.

The 2015 Iowa Summit will spotlight Democrats from both Iowa and across the nation — elected officials, analysts and thought leaders with clear thoughts on how to solve America’s education challenges.

All speakers at both the 2015 New Hampshire Summit and 2015 Iowa Summit are invited in their current personal or professional capacities and will appear on stage separately for an important conversation about America’s education challenges and opportunities. When it comes to most political debates, K-12 education issues tend to get overshadowed by a landslide of other domestic policy issues. The 2015 Education Summits will keep the conversation focused on America’s most urgent policy issue, affording featured speakers time to provide in-depth perspectives outside the formal parameters of the presidential debates.

“As the political world descends on New Hampshire and Iowa, these summits are an unprecedented opportunity to have an honest and intelligent discussion with our leaders about the failures of the education system,” Brown said. “We must begin to treat fixing our education system with the urgency the crisis demands, as it is vital not only to our children’s future, but also the future of this nation