Carly Fiorina, the CEO of Hewlett-Packard for the last six years after a fast-track career as an executive at Lucent Technologies and its forebear, AT&T Network Systems, has left her post at HP under pressure from the company's board.

Robert Wayman, chief financial officer of the company, has been named interim CEO while the company's board of directors begins a search for Fiorina's replacement. HP board member Patricia Dunn has taken the reigns as chairman. The announcement came days before HP's quarterly earnings call and one month before the company's scheduled annual shareholders meeting in Chicago.

While the press release from HP stated that Fiorina, also the chairman of the Palo Alto, Calif., company, had stepped down, comments from board members and from Fiorina herself suggested she did not do so voluntarily.

"While I regret the board and I have differences about how to execute HP's strategy, I respect their decision," Fiorina said in a statement.

On a conference announcing the move, Dunn said that the company's board asked Fiorina this week--after several weeks of deliberation--to step down over differences in how to "execute" corporate strategy.

Dunn credited Fiorina with "laying a solid foundation for success in the market place. She was brought in to catalyze a transformation at Hewlett-Packard." But, without adding specifics, Dunn said, "Going forward, we think job is reliant on hands-on execution."

A rising star at AT&T Network Systems in the 1980s and 1990s before helping lead the company to spin off and renaming as Lucent Technologies in 1996, Fiorina, 50, was the first woman to become CEO of a Dow Jones top-30 firm when she left Lucent for HP in 1999. At the time, she was touted as a symbol for the ascendance of women to corporate leadership posts, as well as someone bringing a fresh perspective to a company considered one of the elder statesmen in both computing and telecommunications markets. Interim CEO Wayman has been with HP for 36 years.