Postcards

Meg Whitman on easing HP's "post-traumatic stress"

Meg Whitman's first report card as CEO of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) comes this afternoon when the company announces fourth-quarter earnings.

In the 60 days since she took the job, Whitman has settled on a strategy (keep HP in the PC business), worked to raise employee morale (terrible after three CEO ousters), and lifted the stock (up 12% since her appointment). But the former eBay (EBAY) chief, who lost her race for governor MORE

Chelsea Handler's tips for negotiating a $25 million deal

The $25 million two-year deal that Chelsea Handler just chalked with the E! network says something about the enterprising queen of late-night TV talk. She sure knows how to negotiate.

Chelsea Handler at the MPW Summit Credit: Asa Mathat

"I do behave badly and I get paid well for it," Handler told Piers Morgan on CNN (TWX) last evening, adding, "It's a really good time to be me."

Last month, when MORE

Lululemon CEO Day tops Google's Larry Page

Since she arrived from Starbucks (SBUX) in 2008, Christine Day has done a remarkable job building Lululemon (LULU). Once just a retailer for yoga enthusiasts, Lululemon is now a fast-growing lifestyle brand. The stock has more than tripled in three years.

Day has never put herself in the spotlight, but Fortune's online readers clearly recognize how effective she is. The results of our just-released Businessperson of the Year poll show that MORE

Sheryl Sandberg's hero: Somaly Mam

Somaly Mam is a hero. Nick Kristof said so in his op-ed column in the New York Times this past weekend. Kristof raided a brothel in Northern Cambodia with this amazing woman who has become the guiding light in fighting forced prostitution around the world.

After escaping a similar brothel, where she was raped and tortured on a daily basis for years, Somaly Mam found her purpose. She devoted her life MORE

Evelyn Lauder: How many lives did she save?

Evelyn Lauder, who died of complications from non-genetic ovarian cancer on Saturday, had a swarm of close friends throughout her life. Yet many close friends who attended her funeral today did not have a clue that she would die so soon.

Classic Evelyn. "It was never about her. It was always about you," Liz Robbins, a prominent Washington lobbyist, told me this morning over breakfast before she headed to the invitation-only MORE

Google engineer: What I learned in the war

Google's Dan Cross in Afghanistan Credit: U.S. Marine Corps

Veteran's Day is an ideal time to hear from one of those rare folks who combine corporate and military careers. Dan Cross, a software engineer at Google (GOOG) and a 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, took a leave to serve active duty in Afghanistan, came home a year ago, and brought back lessons that he couldn't have learned in MORE

PepsiCo boss Nooyi explains her purpose

The best CEOs, I've learned in my 27 years at Fortune, come to the job with a deep-seated passion and a very personal view of what they want to accomplish.

PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi may be struggling lately. Yes, investors are impatient with her healthy-products strategy, the stock is down, and the Pepsi boss dropped to No. 2 behind Kraft Foods (KFT) CEO Irene Rosenfeld on the 2011 Most Powerful Women list.

But MORE

Frances Hesselbein's life in leadership

When Frances Hesselbein was CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA, she believed that "only the best is good enough for those who serve girls." Her philosophy drove a turnaround of that struggling organization and led to friendships with CEOs like Alan Mulally of Ford (F) and management master Peter Drucker.

Hesselbein met Drucker at New York's University Club in 1981--an encounter that turned out to be life-changing. After leading the MORE

Behind Richard Rainwater's fight for his life

Richard Rainwater is one of the most vital men I've ever met. Michael Eisner, the former CEO of Walt Disney (DIS), described the Texas billionaire to me this way: "Of anybody I ever met, Richard was the most charismatic, the most outgoing, most hands-on, huggy, high-fiving, jumping-up-and-down, vivacious executive."

So it is terribly ironic and terribly cruel to see Rainwater, a self-made success and one of the greatest dealmakers ever, suffering MORE

How to do a successful IPO

Photo: John Hausner

I knew Lise Buyer when she was a hotshot technology analyst at Credit Suisse (CS) in the late 1990s, during the first Internet bubble. Since quitting Wall Street in 2000 to become a venture capitalist, Buyer has been low-profile--but she's active in the world of startups. She now runs Class V Group, guiding IPO-bound companies. I asked Buyer if she'd share her advice on Postcards. Today, the MORE