Boardroom politics may have been her nemesis at Hewlett-Packard, but that hasn’t stopped former HP Chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina from appreciating the role boards play in bringing about change. That’s why she’s serving on a number of them, Fiorina said at the Wall Street Journal Deals and Deal Makers Conference on Wednesday.

Fiorina is using them to push causes close to her heart, including eliminating poverty and increasing the number of women in boardrooms, she said. “If you don’t get women involved, solutions don’t happen as fast,” she said. Although women have made some progress, she added, it’s still “clearly not a meritocracy.”

Some of these ideas have made their way into her memoir, Tough Choices, in which she also talks about steering HP through the tech slump and the merger with Compaq. Fiorina was fired from HP in 2005.

Fiorina said she often gets asked whether she will get into politics, but said she has no plans so far.

Her presidential candidate favorite? Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.
McCain strikes her as the kind of person who knows “the only way to solve problems is to find common ground with people” who don’t necessarily share the same point of view.

- Reporting by Anupreeta Das