Postcards

Beyond gossip girls: College women talk math and science

by Jessica Shambora

Yesterday morning a group of 22 college women gathered at the Time & Life building in New York City for breakfast. Not surprisingly, they were abuzz with chatter. But the topic du jour wasn't the next Twilight film, or the latest reality show gossip. What got these women going at such an early hour? Math and science.

"I don't get to talk about science with other girls very often," MORE

Amanpour and Mulcahy stump for global action

by Jessica Shambora

Global issues took center stage at last night's Fortune Most Powerful Women dinner in New York, thanks to the voices of CNN's legendary foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour and Xerox's (XRX) Anne Mulcahy, who retired as chairman yesterday.

Amanpour, who spent 27 years at CNN championing international coverage, heads to ABC in August to take over from George Stephanopoulos as host of Sunday morning's This Week. She told Fortune's Pattie MORE

Fixing health care...in the supermarket

by Jessica Shambora

Here's a familiar scenario: You have a sore throat or an earache. It could be just a virus, but you want to get it checked out to make sure. Good luck getting in to see your regular doctor right away.

Typically your best option is an urgent care clinic or the emergency room, where you could wait hours to be seen, in a room filled with other sick people. MORE

A solar start-up that saves energy--and cash

Lynn Jurich was flying from Hong Kong to Shanghai when a flight attendant told passengers to "look outside at the clear skies." What Jurich saw disturbed her greatly: a blanket of gray smog. "It kind of hit me right then and there that this is a real issue. This is our Earth," she says, adding that she decided that it's "my responsibility as a business person to try to solve MORE

Two Sportsmen: Jeter and Woods

by Jessica Shambora

"He is a role model not only for how to play baseball but also for how to remain atop the wobbly pedestal of fame."

-- Sports Illustrated's Tom Verducci, who wrote this week's cover story about Derek Jeter, captain of the world-champion New York Yankees and SI's 2009 Sportsman of the Year.

Kudos to Jeter. He stands in stark contrast to the only athlete in history who has received MORE

Power Point: Heed the ham!

"All of a sudden this ham... hit me full long in the face and 'bout knocked me cuckoo."

--Celebrity cook and Food Network star Paula Deen, who was hit in the face by a ham today while volunteering at an Atlanta food drive. Deen, who was helping to unload 25,000 pounds of meat donated to a local food bank, was the honored guest at a recent "Fortune Most Powerful Women Evening MORE

Ex-White House Press Secretary: Straight talk on careers

by Jessica Shambora

Dana Perino is only 37 years old and already has the title "White House Press Secretary" on her resume.

But at age 25, after working on Capitol Hill for two and a half years, she was saying to herself, "I thought I'd be further along than this."

All around her, it seemed, men were leap-frogging into higher positions. She wasn't sure which path would help her advance her own career.

That MORE

Portraits of Powerful Women

With so many movers and shakers gathered at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in September, we jumped at the chance to capture some of them on film. Xerox (XRX) CEO Ursula Burns, McDonald's (MCD) USA COO Jan Fields, and Google (GOOG) VP of Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer are among the portraits you'll find in this gallery, shot by another notable woman, photographer Robyn Twomey. A regular MORE

Power Point: How to pick a magazine cover

"Young is better than old, Pretty is better than ugly, Rich is better than poor, T.V. is better than music, Music is better than movies, Movies are better than sports, Anything is better than politics, And nothing is better than the celebrity dead."

--Stolley's Law of Covers, created by Dick Stolley, senior editorial advisor to Time Inc., and founding editor, People. A legend of the magazine world, he made history when he secured the rights the Zapruder footage MORE

Power Point: To friend or unfriend?

"'Unfriend' has real lex-appeal."

-- Christine Lindberg, senior lexicographer for the Oxford University Press's U.S. dictionary program. Today The New Oxford American Dictionary revealed that 'unfriend' is the 2009 word of the year. If you've got a Facebook profile, you've likely unfriended some annoying person in your network. Someone may have even (gasp) unfriended you!

There were lots of tech-isms in the running this year--paywall, netbook, sexting. One tech trend actually spawned MORE