Arianna_huffington I just finished reading a profile on Arianna Huffington, the founder of the Huffington Post, which, according to London’s Observer, is one of the world’s most influential media outlets. The profile sheds light on Huffington’s strong and vocal personality, one which attracts the attention of media moguls, Hollywood celebrities and politicians. Here are some excerpts of the profile:

To watch Arianna at work is to see a human blog in action. Each air kiss seems like the click of a computer’s mouse, each handshake a link to another potential blogger in an ever-growing network of movers and shakers. No wonder she has prospered in the world of the web. At the Time lunch she meets Hollywood star Emilio Estevez. Click. Later, at the Council on Foreign Relations, the glamorous Hungarian-American chess grandmaster Susan Polgar eagerly presses her business card into her hand. Click. By evening she is at CNN headquarters where top anchor Paula Zahn greets her with a girlish exclamation: ‘Arianna!’ Click

And there’s more:

She embraces some of the mockery, turning it deftly on itself. At pretty much any public appearance, she rapidly disarms the crowd with a self-mocking reference to her accent. ‘Everyone on this panel has an accent,’ she says at the CFR, where she shares a stage with a Russian businessman, an Italian neuroscientist and a Canadian journalist. ‘It’s great for me to be not the only person with an accent.’ The crowd laughs and is instantly won over.

Read the whole profile here. Hat tip: [Euroarabe]