Patricia C. Dunn (March 27, 1953 – December 4, 2011) was the non-executive chairman of the board of

Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...

(HP) from February 2005 until September 22, 2006, when she resigned her position. On October 4, 2006,

Bill Lockyer William Westwood Lockyer (born May 8, 1941) is an American politician and lawyer from the state of California. A Democrat, he served in both houses of the state legislature, having been a member of the California State Assembly from 1973 to 19 ...

, the California attorney general, charged Dunn with four felonies for her role in the HP spying scandal. Some members of the press reported that Dunn had been scapegoated. On March 14, 2007, California Superior Court Judge Ray Cunningham dismissed the charges against her.

Early life

Born in

Burbank, California Burbank is a city in the southeastern end of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Located northwest of downtown Los Angeles, Burbank had a Census-estimated population of 102,755 as of 2023. The city was ...

, Dunn grew up in

Las Vegas, Nevada Las Vegas, colloquially referred to as Vegas, is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and the county seat of Clark County. The Las Vegas Valley metropolitan area is the largest within the greater Mojave Desert, and second-l ...

, where both her parents were involved in the casino industry. Her father was the entertainment manager for the Dunes and Tropicana hotel-casinos, and her mother was a model and entertainer. When Dunn was only eleven, her father died. Her mother subsequently moved the family to California.

Education

After graduating from Terra Linda High School in 1970, Dunn entered the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a Public university, public research university in Eugene, Oregon, United States. Founded in 1876, the university is organized into nine colleges and schools and offers 420 undergraduate and gra ...

, but dropped out to support her mother by working as a housecleaner. She resumed college and graduated from

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

in 1975 with a B.A. in Journalism.

Career

After college Dunn began working as a temporary secretary at Wells Fargo & Co. She eventually became CEO at

Barclays Global Investors BlackRock, Inc. is an American multinational investment company. Founded in 1988, initially as an enterprise risk management and fixed income institutional asset manager, BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager, with US$11.5trillion i ...

, the company that acquired the asset management division of Wells Fargo. In 1998 she joined the HP Board of Directors. In 2001 the Financial Women of San Francisco named Dunn the "Financial Woman of the Year". Dunn became non-executive chair of the HP board in February 2005 when

Carly Fiorina Cara Carleton "Carly" Fiorina (; ; born September 6, 1954) is an American businesswoman and politician, known primarily for her tenure as chief executive officer (CEO) of Hewlett-Packard (HP) from 1999 to 2005. Fiorina was the first woman to le ...

, the CEO and chair of the HP board, left the company. Dunn was also non-executive Vice Chairman of Barclays Global Investors from 2002 to October 2006. Additionally, she was Director and Executive Committee member of Larkin Street Youth Services in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, on the board of the Conference Board's Global Corporate Governance Research Center, and an advisory board member of

Haas School of Business The Walter A. Haas School of Business (branded as Berkeley Haas) is the business school of the University of California, Berkeley, a Public university, public research university in Berkeley, California. It was the first business school at a pub ...

Scandal

Dunn was at the center of the 2006 HP Spying Scandal because she directed investigations of board-level leaks of information to reporters in 2005–2006. HP hired companies which, while investigating the leaks, obtained the personal telephone records of HP board members and reporters who covered HP through a practice called

pretext A pretext (: ''pretextual'') is an excuse to do something or say something that is not accurate. Pretexts may be based on a half-truth or developed in the context of a misleading fabrication. Pretexts have been used to conceal the true purpose or r ...

ing. It is illegal under California law to use deceit and trickery to obtain private records of individuals. HP announced on September 12, 2006, that Mark Hurd (the company's CEO) would replace Dunn as Chairman in January but she would continue as a board member. Ten days later, however, Dunn resigned (effective immediately) both from her position as chairman ''and'' from the board. In an official statement, Dunn noted "I accepted the responsibility to identify the sources of those leaks, but I did not propose the specific methods of the investigation... Unfortunately, the people HP relied upon to conduct this type of investigation let me and the company down. I continue to have the best interests of HP at heart and thus I have accepted the board's request to resign." On October 4, 2006, Dunn and four others were charged by California

attorney general In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general (: attorneys general) or attorney-general (AG or Atty.-Gen) is the main legal advisor to the government. In some jurisdictions, attorneys general also have executive responsibility for law enf ...

with four

felon A felony is traditionally considered a crime of high seriousness, whereas a misdemeanor is regarded as less serious. The term "felony" originated from English common law (from the French medieval word "''félonie''") to describe an offense that ...

y counts:

fraud In law, fraud is intent (law), intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly. Fraud can violate Civil law (common law), civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrato ...

ulent use of wire, radio or television transmissions; taking, copying, and using computer data without authorization;

identity theft Identity theft, identity piracy or identity infringement occurs when someone uses another's personal identifying information, like their name, identifying number, or credit card number, without their permission, to commit fraud or other crimes. ...

; and

conspiracy A conspiracy, also known as a plot, ploy, or scheme, is a secret plan or agreement between people (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder, treason, or corruption, especially with a political motivat ...

. Lockyer issued

arrest warrant An arrest warrant is a warrant issued by a judge or magistrate on behalf of the state which authorizes the arrest and detention of an individual or the search and seizure of an individual's property. Canada Arrest warrants are issued by a jud ...

s for all five of those so charged. Dunn was scheduled to have been arraigned on November 17, 2006. On March 14, 2007, the judge in the case dropped all criminal charges against her in the "interests of justice". The dropping of the criminal charges by Judge Cunningham came after Dunn refused to take a plea of one misdemeanor in exchange for four felonies before the preliminary hearing.

Personal life

Dunn married William Jahnke, a former head of Wells Fargo Investment Advisors. The couple owned a

winery A winery is a building or property that produces wine, or a business involved in the cultivation and production of wine, such as a wine company. Some wine companies own many wineries. Besides wine making equipment, larger wineries may also feat ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

, a home in

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

, and a home in

Orinda, California Orinda is a city in Contra Costa County, California, United States. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census is estimated at 19,514 residents. History Orinda is located within four Mexican land grants: Rancho La ...

. Having survived

breast The breasts are two prominences located on the upper ventral region of the torso among humans and other primates. Both sexes develop breasts from the same embryology, embryological tissues. The relative size and development of the breasts is ...

and

skin cancer Skin cancers are cancers that arise from the Human skin, skin. They are due to the development of abnormal cells (biology), cells that have the ability to invade or metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. It occurs when skin cells grow ...

, Dunn was diagnosed in January 2004 with advanced ovarian cancer.

Chemotherapy Chemotherapy (often abbreviated chemo, sometimes CTX and CTx) is the type of cancer treatment that uses one or more anti-cancer drugs (list of chemotherapeutic agents, chemotherapeutic agents or alkylating agents) in a standard chemotherapy re ...

led to remission until August 2006, when she underwent surgery to remove liver metastases. On December 4, 2011, she died at home in Orindasurvived by her husband, three adult children, ten grandchildren, a brother, and a sister(bad link)(subscription required for full article)at age 58.

References

External links

2006 Separate videos of Fiorina and Dunn after HP pretexting scandal
2006-10-08
The HP Spying Scandal
Lindsay A. Graham, 2022, via Wondery (podcast) {{DEFAULTSORT:Dunn, Patricia C. 1953 births 2011 deaths American computer businesspeople Deaths from ovarian cancer in California Hewlett-Packard people University of California, Berkeley alumni American chairpersons of corporations Businesspeople from the San Francisco Bay Area American women corporate directors Businesspeople from Las Vegas Wells Fargo employees BlackRock people People from Burbank, California Technology corporate directors People from Orinda, California 20th-century American businesspeople 20th-century American businesswomen 21st-century American women