Former HP chairwoman, Patrician Dunn, dies

SAN FRANCISCO -- Patricia Dunn, the former Hewlett-Packard Co. chairwoman who authorized a boardroom surveillance probe that ultimately sullied her remarkable rise from investment bank typist to the corporate upper class, has died after a long bout with cancer. She was 58.

Dunn died Sunday morning at her home in Orinda surrounded by her family, according to her sister, Debbie Lammers. She said Dunn's ovarian cancer had returned.

Once one of the most powerful women in corporate America, Dunn saw her career tarnished in 2006 when she was ousted from HP and brought up on criminal charges -- which were ultimately dropped -- for approving the company's plan to snoop into the private phone records of board members, journalists and HP employees to catch people leaking to the media.

The scandal unfolded as Dunn continued to battle a disease that had haunted her through a sparkling investment banking career and a stormy nine-year stretch on the board of HP, one of the world's largest technology companies.

Dunn had spent time on philanthropic matters in the years since the scandal, Lammers said. Dunn and her husband, Bill Jahnke, endowed a faculty position at the University of California, San Francisco's Department of Surgery named in honor of her mother, who also died of cancer.

Dunn's time at HP coincided with some of the most contentious and challenging periods since the Palo Alto-based company was founded in 1939.

Dunn joined HP's board in 1998 and was instrumental in the hiring and firing of chief executive Carly Fiorina, whose flamboyant personality and ferocity in securing the $19 billion purchase of Compaq Computer Corp. ultimately helped hasten her ouster amid a sagging stock price and disappointing results from the combined company.

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Dunn announced Fiorina's ouster in February 2005 and named her low-key successor, Mark Hurd, previously chief executive of NCR Corp. Dunn also assumed Fiorina's role as chairwoman at the time.

After working briefly as a part-time reporter for a community newspaper in San Francisco, Dunn began her corporate climb by capitalizing on a temporary typist gig that she landed at an investment firm in the 1970s.

She was able to turn the two-week typing assignment into full-time work and managed to quickly rise through the ranks by earning a reputation as a hard-edge businesswoman. That reputation eventually helped her earn the promotion to chief executive of fund management behemoth Barclays Global Investors in 1995.

It was at the height of Dunn's corporate success when she was diagnosed with cancer herself, forcing her to step down in 2002 from her role as Barclays chief executive to fight breast cancer and melanoma.

Two years later, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and in fall 2006, she underwent surgery for a metastasized tumor -- three weeks before the public learned of the HP investigation that spawned congressional investigations, criminal probes and forced Dunn's resignation.

Dunn's family is planning a memorial service in San Francisco. She is survived by her husband, Jahnke; three adult children, Janai Brengman, Michelle Cox and Michael Jahnke; 10 grandchildren; a brother, Paul Dunn, and a sister, Debbie Lammers.