The former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard had been invited to give a keynote address in November to a conference on American business — a topic she knew well, having spearheaded one of the biggest tech mergers in history.

Above: Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina speaks in Des Moines in late October. (Charles Ommanney/The Washington Post)

Instead, Fiorina opened with her charitable work overseas and what she learned by giving microloans to poor women in India.

“There are two looks that people get,” she told her audience, a mix of college students and business professionals in Philadelphia. “There is a look that somebody gets when they realize they can achieve more than they thought. . . . There’s also a look people get when they’re hopeless. You see it in their eyes when people have given up.”

She compared her former employees at HP to the budding entrepreneurs in the slums of New Delhi — all of whom, she explained, needed a boost to reach their potential. She had helped provide it, she said.

As she pursues her long-shot presidential bid, Fiorina has often sought to characterize her divisive tenure at HP as a success. She exhibited the same drive, discipline and unbending resolve she argues is needed to fix the country’s problems, along with a willingness to take action in the face of fierce opposition.

But her decision to champion a mega-deal with Compaq Computer in 2001 — the most significant and criticized move of her career — ultimately became a key reason she lost her job as the country’s most high-profile female CEO. And it remains a liability in her primary campaign.

“An awful lot of analysts said, ‘No, don’t do this,’ and she took it upon herself to prove them wrong,” remembered Roy Verley, HP’s former chief corporate spokesman. “And the more the criticism mounted, the more determined she became to make it work.”

Fiorina, 61, declined multiple requests for an interview for this article. When asked at the business conference about the merger, she defended her decision to press ahead. “If you are not leading, you are failing,” she said. “To transform a company from a laggard to a leader took a lot of bold moves and tough choices.”

“What kept me going during that time,” she said, “is the fact that I knew that this company and these people were capable of leadership and greatness. When you know what someone’s capable of, you do everything you can to ensure they have the opportunity to demonstrate their capacity.” But it was also an opportunity for her to demonstrate her own.