Arianna Huffington

Arianna Huffington is a prolific author and international media mogul who started the award-winning news platform The Huffington Post.

Born on July 15, 1950, in Athens, Greece, Arianna Huffington went on to study economics at the University of Cambridge, eventually moving to the United States. She was a conservative commentator before switching to liberal politics and started the Web site The Huffington Post in 2005. The site, purchased by AOL in 2011, has gone on to become a popular and powerful online news platform. Huffington is also the author of more than a dozen books on topics ranging from feminism to corporate America to politics. In 2016, Huffington annnounced her departure from The Huffington Post to launch Thrive Global, a start-up company dedicated to health and wellness.

Arianna Huffington was born Arianna Stassinopoulus in Athens, Greece, on July 15, 1950. She moved to Great Britain during her teens to study at the University of Cambridge, where she earned her master's in economics and became president of its famed debate organization, the Cambridge Union. She then set up shop in London and pursued writing. In 1974, with Random House, she published her first book, The Female Woman, which looks at and critiques certain trends in women's liberation movements. She followed that with the political-oriented work After Reason in 1980.

Stassinopoulus moved to the United States in 1980. The following year, she released an acclaimed biography of one of the world's opera greats, Maria Callas: The Woman Behind the Legend. In 1983, she was able to plumb her ethnic roots with the work The Gods of Greece, which looked at the importance of ancient myths, and by the end of the decade she had also released a biography of Picasso.

Huffington was initially known for her conservative political views and commentary, and she made regular television appearances to support her standpoints. But she eventually began to embrace more left-leaning platforms, including ecological activism and corporate reform.