Quick Bio
Name: Arianna Huffington
Born: July 15, 1950
Nationality: American
Occupation: Journalist, Author, and Philanthropist
Famous Quotes
“Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me.”
“Mainstream media tend to just mouth the conventional wisdom, to see everything through the filter of right and left.”
“But you have to do what you dream of doing even while you’re afraid.”
Arianna Huffington is a world renowned journalist, media mogul, and philanthropist. Despite suffering a series of rejection, criticism, and failure in her entrepreneurial journey, Huffington remained steadfast and persistent. Today, she is a celebrated successful feminist who has been featured in top leading news platforms and magazines. She is one of the most influential women of the world. She is the co-founder of the dominant online general news platform, The Huffington post.
Early Life
Arianna Stasinopoulos Huffington was born in Athens, Greece. She is the first child of Mr. Konstantinos Stasinopoulos, who was a journalist at the time, and his wife, Elli Stasinopoulos. Huffington had a younger sister, Agapi Stassinopoulos.
At age 11, young Huffington and her little sister witnessed their parents’ heartbreaking divorce after 25 solid years of marriage. The two little girls had to grow under the care and comfort of their struggling single mom.
Experiencing parents’ divorce and suddenly having to live with a single parent is a big shock the two little girls had to live with for the rest of their lives.
However, Elli Stassinopoulos struggled relentlessly and gave her two little princesses the best life she could offer. Living wasn’t quite easy at first, but gradually Huffington got used to being amidst women all through the vital period of her life. This, in turn, brought about a drive of feminism.
From a very tender age, Huffington had her mind fixed at furthering her education, and at a prestigious University. At first, as a non-English speaker and as a girl from a relatively poor home with only a single parent to cater for her needs, Huffington was heavily downgraded and severely mocked when she made clear her intentions of wanting to study at Cambridge University.
However, regardless of people’s not-so-cool remarks and their family’s hand-to-mouth feeding, Elli encouraged little Huffington and promised her to find a way to sponsor her education.
Elli, after earnestly seeking and struggling for fund, she eventually found a way. She took loans from friends, families, and corporate organizations. This enabled them to relocate to England in regards to Huffington’s education. According to Huffington, her mom made her believe that failure is neither the last resort nor the opposite of success — she explained failure to be a stepping stone.
At the age of sixteen, after all the upsetting mockery, the negative feedbacks, and the struggles for money was overcome, Elli’s struggles and Huffington’s efforts paid off — She was issued admission into Cambridge. The brilliant Huffington struggled relentlessly, bearing in mind the hardship her mom overcame in order to fund her education. She graduated with honors after obtaining her Master’s degree in economics at the age of 21. Huffington also gained massive fame back in her Cambridge days as a result of her brilliance and competence; she was elected the president of the famed debating society, The Cambridge union. This made her the first foreign, and the third female student to earn the title.
Career
After her graduation, Huffington relocated to New York where she worked as a television commentator. Meanwhile, she had been in love with writing ever since her tender years. However, she never really had the time and space to write freely. After her graduation, she then was able to squeeze writing into her schedule.
Despite her job, Huffington persistently engaged in her writings backstage and eventually published her first book, The Female Woman, which focused on feminism. The book written with stress and persistence showcased Huffington’s writing skills to the world. The book was a huge success to Huffington and also helped a great deal in earning her fame and fortune.
She immediately tried to uphold her writing glory by writing more often than she used to. However, her second book, Reason After, got rejected thirty-six times by major publishers.
Despite the demoralization she suffered, Huffington persisted and sent the book to one publisher after another until it was finally published (only writers can relate to the anguish and depression suffered when books/articles written with sweat and stress gets rejected).
Huffington however never flinched or let the depression overwhelm her. Huffington worked harder and more determined than ever. As result, she captured the world’s attention once more with her works which include the biographies of Maria Callas and Picasso.
Just when things were beginning to fall in place for Huffington, she was accused of plagiarism in her book, The Gods of Greece. Once again, Huffington had to divert from focusing on writing new books to dealing with this crack-up. However, the case was closed after a while and no lawsuit was filed.
Years later, Huffington got married to a Republican congressman, Michael Huffington. After a few years of marriage, however, she divorced him after she was hurtfully confronted with the truth of him being bi-sexual. She then relocated to Los Angeles with her two little daughters. She cared and catered for her daughters single-handed; thereby unconsciously recreating the scenario of her growing up.
In 2003, Huffington tried partaking in politics; she ran for California State Gubernatorial election. Her attempt, however, was unsuccessful. At the same time, she never let the failure break her; Huffington viewed her failure positively and instead of being devastated, she was delighted at the support of the public and learned the power of the internet after she raised more than $1 million from an online campaign to run for the election.
Shortly after her massive failure, Huffington co-founded Huffington post with Kenneth Lerer, whom she met at an interview after the failed attempt at the election.
The idea of Huffingtonpost was welcomed with severe criticism from journalists and the general public alike in the early stage of its launch. Raising fund for the creation of Huffingtonpost was a big deal for Huffington; again, she had to endure people’s devastating reviews and criticism.
Huffington, with the help of her partner, Lerer, disregarded the criticism and focused primarily on improving the platform. They intended on creating HuffPost as a simple news platform but, however, ended up creating a platform with news from all aspect of human endeavor.
Presently, journalists who frowned at the idea of HuffPost tend to describe it as a platform with details missing from the mainstream.
Huffington said in an interview, Very often there are going to be naysayers and critics. But don’t let that dominate, or you won’t be able to do something new and risky.
Presently, Huffington’s net worth is estimated at $50 million. She is the author of tons of bestselling books in the areas of feminism, culture, politics, and so on.
The role model to many, Huffington, presently never cease to appear on lists of most influential and powerful women of all time; she appeared 70th in the 2016 list of Forbes’ evaluation of the 100 most influential women of the world.
Huffington suffered lots and lots of failure, criticism, rejection, and pain. Yet, she never let her drive and big dreams get dominated by these temporary predicaments.
Just like Huffington said, One can never go through life without experiencing failure, critics, and rejection. The quicker you realize this fact, the more prepared you’ll be in your dream chase. Strive and learn to always see failure as a stepping stone.
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Joseph Chukwube
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