ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Entrepreneur, Mogul, Role Model, American

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: Entrepreneur, Mogul, Role Model, American: "Arianna Huffington has long been known and admired for her success as a pundit.

With the sale of Huffington Post to AOL, she also deserves to become known and admired for a few other things.

First, as an entrepreneur. Arianna co-founded the Huffington Post in 2005 and built it into a profitable $30 million business over six years. In the process, she helped create 200+ jobs, raise $35+ million of capital, and build a nationally recognized brand. She also invented a whole new kind of media business, one built from the ground up to take advantage of the digital medium, one that cleaned the clocks of dozens of richer, more powerful, and better-branded competitors. Along the way, Arianna also fought off a steady fusillade of griping and naysaying from those who dismissed her ideas as trash, theft, and idiocy, eventually overcoming these criticisms and building Huffington Post into an establishment brand."