She has been named by Fortune magazine as one of the most powerful women in US business for three years in a row. And she has stood out among the computer industry's male dominated senior executives, and effectively communicated to the investor community on the company's plans and business opportunities.

Ms Fiorina is a rarity. She is only one of two women leading the 500 largest US companies. The other person is Andrea Jung, head of Avon Products, the cosmetics company.

She joined the company in July of 1999 after an exhaustive CEO search, succeeding Lewis Platt. She had previously spent about 20 years at AT&T and then later at Lucent Technologies, which was spun-off from AT&T in 1996. HP was impressed by her record as president of Lucent's Global Service Provider Business, a group that showed large growth and expansion worldwide in her two-year tenure.

But heading HP meant taking on a very challenging role. Although the company was doing well in its printer business, its computer business had lost ground, especially to Sun Microsystems in the server market. Sun, well known as an aggressive competitor, had widened its lead in the Unix server market. And HP had lost momentum in a fast growing market that was critical to expanding revenues in its computer business. Ms Fiorina acted quickly. One of her first priorities was to revamp the company's server line, introducing high-end models that provided price/ performance competition with Sun's server line. And she also personally took charge in winning some high profile accounts such as Amazon.com, the leading online retailer, which had been using computer systems from Sun and Compaq Computer.

She also took steps to shake up HP's company culture, which had been set by its founders more than 50 years ago as "The HP Way" and needed modernising to Silicon Valley's fast paced "internet time" culture. Ms Fiorina brought in more management accountability and performance related compensation, and helped separate HP from its test and measurement business, which was spun-off as Agilent Technologies.

She quickly earned praise from financial analysts and other HP observers for her clear vision and the courage to make tough decisions, and demonstrated steadily improving financial results. HP insiders were also impressed by her ability to improve morale and motivate employees through a global tour visiting the company's overseas offices and by seeking the counsel of staff at all positions within the company.

The honeymoon, however, ended abruptly in November. Ms Fiorina was in the awkward position of having to report that HP would miss Wall Street estimates for its fourth quarter by 10 cents a share - a substantial margin. Wall Street hates such surprises, especially since HP had not changed its guidance just two weeks before the profit warning.

In addition, she announced that HP's closely watched negotiations to purchase the consulting group of Pricewaterhouse Coopers, a deal with a potential value of $18bn, had fallen apart.

On top of this, Ms Fiorina faces an additional challenge in revitalising HP's depressed market capitalisation. In recent weeks, the company's shares have been trading at more than 50 per cent below their year high of $78 reached in early April.

In early December, Ms Fiorina unveiled a turnaround strategy at an analyst conference. She said that the company would divest some of its software assets, acquire others, and focus on fast growing business opportunities in high-end servers and in business printing.

And in the wake of its failed acquisition of the PwC consulting group, it would grow its consultancy business organically.

Hiring of new staff would continue but at a sharply reduced rate. And its PC business would grow but mostly outside the US.

"We see accelerating growth in the enterprise sector, especially in the US," said Ms Fiorina. With corporations worldwide investing in e-business systems, Ms Fiorina plans to use the continued strong growth in the global internet to drive revenues and profits. She also said that the company had instituted new finance and management reporting systems to ensure a clearer view of revenues and avoid surprising Wall Street.

She did not change prior guidance of 15 to 17 per cent growth for financial year 2001. However, she complained about the company's low market valuation and said that HP was aggressively buying back its own stock with up to $1bn in funds.

Ms Fiorina is also keenly interested in bringing the power and potential of the internet to less developed parts of the world through a series of projects installing computers and internet connections in rural villages in central America, Africa and Asia. But, as she is quick to point out, this is not just an altruistic move. She recognises that developing countries will, over the next few years, become key in maintaining strong levels of growth in the computer industry - producing profits for HP, and potentially improving the lives of hundreds of millions of the world's poor.