Sue Decker moves on from Yahoo
Sue Decker is leaving Yahoo (YHOO). The news broke Tuesday afternoon just as Yahoo announced that its board has chosen former Autodesk (ADSK) chief Carol Bartz as the company’s new CEO. As Yahoo’s president, Decker was the lone Yahoo insider who was a strong candidate in the CEO search. And she wanted the job. But Yahoo’s poor performance and her loyalty to outgoing chief Jerry Yang damaged her reputation too badly.
That doesn’t mean that Decker, 46, won’t land a good gig elsewhere. She has unusual breadth of experience given her seats on the Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B), Costco (COST) and Intel (INTC) boards. (She’s on the Intel board with Bartz.) Decker was also a director at Pixar until Disney’s (DIS) 2006 acquisition of Steve Jobs’ film company. That impressive resume, in fact, landed Decker a spot on the 2008 Fortune Most Powerful Women list, though Yahoo’s foibles pulled her ranking to No. 39 from No. 20 in 2007.
Once a Wall Street analyst who covered advertising stocks, she’s a finance ace and could get a job as a CFO at another Fortune 500 company. But she’s already done the CFO job at Yahoo. I know from talking with Decker that she prefers running a business, and probably a big one. No question she’ll tap one of her fans, Warren Buffett, to help her get her career back on track. Especially in this job market, that’s a fine fan to have.
P.S. Click here to read the post I wrote about Decker last November.
Esther Wojcicki: The last newspaper generationJournalism teacher and newspaper adviser at Palo Alto High School
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Patricia Sellers has written some of Fortune's most talked-about cover stories, including "Can Meg Whitman Save California?", Melinda Gates ("The $100 Billion Woman"), "MySpace Cowboys," Martha Stewart ("I cannot be destroyed"), Ted Turner ("Gone with the Wind") and Oprah Winfrey ("Oprah Inc."). And she has broken ground with insightful pieces on career management issues such as ego ("Get Over Yourself!"), and "Charisma: Do You Need It? Can You Get It?" Pattie chairs the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the preeminent gathering of women leaders in business, philanthropy, government, academia, and the arts. And she has helped oversee Fortune's "Most Powerful Women in Business" cover package since its launch in 1998. She started at Fortune in 1984, covering the big consumer brand companies.
Jessica Shambora started with Fortune as a reporter in June of 2008, following a stint as assistant editor at Travel+Leisure Golf. Shambora has written for Sports Illustrated, SI Latino, Women's Health, and Triathlete. She is a frequent contributor to Postcards. 
